


In the Major and Minor Arcana

by Arthur_Fleck



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Joker (2019)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Bondage, Cunnilingus, Dark Romance, Depression, Dirty Talk, Drama, Eventual Smut, F/M, Femme Domme, First Kiss, Grief, Insanity, Light Bondage, Loss of Virginity, Masturbation, Mental Illness, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Pining, Pornography, Psychological Drama, Romance, Self-Harm, Slow Burn, Spit Kink, Suicide Attempt, Tarot, Witchcraft, fluid swapping, self-injury, sexual awakening, soft domme
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-01-25 00:34:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21347362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arthur_Fleck/pseuds/Arthur_Fleck
Summary: After being released from the psychiatric hospital, Arthur struggles to hold together his life and sanity. But when he meets an unusual woman in his apartment building, he realizes he's not the only one with demons. [Prequel]
Relationships: Arthur Fleck/Original Character(s), Arthur Fleck/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 68
Kudos: 209





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone. Thanks for taking the time to read this fic. I had this idea basically as soon as I saw the film and spent the last few weeks thinking it over until I was finally ready to put something together. I was very interested in Arthur's life just after he was released from the psychiatric hospital but before the events of the film. As a result you could probably consider this a prequel of sorts. Let me know what you think, and I will update soon. xx

_Happy birthday to you_

_Happy birthday to you_

_Happy birthday, dear Arthur_

_Happy birthday to you_

A smattering of clapping crackled across the lunch hall. The table seemed to be abnormally long, the rows of patients on either side staring at him like eyeless saints in their marble uniforms. Elsewhere in the hospital an air conditioning unit hummed, blasting them with dry, freezing air. Patients chattered with each other. And there was Arthur, slumped at the head of the table feeling less like a man of honor and more like a bad little boy on display to the class. His head swam and pulsed. It was as if he had just woken up there.

“Blow out your candle.”

Arthur slowly turned his head over his shoulder. There was a female nurse in blue scrubs smiling down at him, a thin black woman that he may have seen before. On the other side, a large male whose mouth was expressionless line. Down in front of him was a chocolate cupcake with a single candle. A hand emerged from his peripheral and lit it with a lighter. He blew it out with great effort.

“Go ahead. You can eat it now.”

Arthur lifted his heavy hand, his naked arm icy cold in his white shirt, and slowly reached for the cupcake. Through half-lidded eyes the cake was a darkened blur surrounded by white. He grabbed it like you’d grab a can of soda, slow and oafish and uncoordinated, and crushed it in his hand until it crumbled and oozed out the paper base, frosting and cake and candle top spilling onto the white table, then pressed the fistful into his mouth, chewing the wrapper like a cow with a cud until it fell onto his lap.

In a soft and not entirely unpleasant voice the nurse asked, “What do you want for your birthday, Arthur?”

Her breath was soft and warm against the shell of his ear, heating the tacky sweat on his scalp, and deep inside him in a dark pit somewhere he wished she’d put his hand on his shoulder or touch him anywhere.

“I want to go home,” he slurred through the mud mess of chocolate, fingers sticky filthy, tongue a flopping fat worm in his mouth.

“In a few days,” she said.

The other patients stared at him motionless in the peripheral of his vision like statues, the sounds of them running into each other like water over rocks. The cake tasted like nothing and felt like an enormous wad of gum in his mouth that he couldn’t swallow. His white pants were peppered with chocolate crumbs.

“I want to go home,” he repeated.

“Soon.”

Arthur swallowed. It was like swallowing a handful of dirt. Somebody was wiping his filthy mouth with a napkin. His hand crushed the remaining cupcake again, taking the candle with it, and he shoved it in his face and chewed, eyes looking, rolling, anywhere, the wax candle crushing and splintering between his teeth. The nurses behind him loomed like gargoyles cloaked in shadow.

“I want…”

The world was enveloped in a soft blanket of shadow that he could not resist. Slipping into the relief of darkness, Arthur landed face-first onto the table, chocolate frosting smearing onto his cheek and into his tangle of dark hair. Laughter bubbled dully around him. When he awoke he would have hard crumbs in his nose and a bruise on his head, sore and not unfamiliar, but that would not be for many hours.

Arthur spent the rest of his 31st birthday asleep in his cot.

\---

“Will that be all, sir?”

Arthur blinked, snapping back to reality. The cashier was looking at him with a still but impatient expression. The blue notebook sat lonely on the conveyer belt. He briefly wondered how long he’d been standing there.

“Oh. Yeah.”

A beat, and then, with even less patience, “One dollar, please.”

Even through the overall numbness in his body Arthur felt a pang of embarrassment. “Oh, yeah. Sorry.” Reaching for his wallet he offered, “My therapist told me I should get one of these. For writing down my thoughts and feelings. Just ‘cause, you know, it can be hard to—“

Her hand jutted out, notebook in a plastic bag. “Have a good day, sir.”

It was so light it felt like almost nothing in his hand. A crinkled yellow smiley face on the bag grinned THANK YOU!

Inside his apartment, his mother was asleep on her chair in the living room despite the raucous music and popping of gunshots coming from the Western on the TV. Arthur flipped through the channels a few times, finally landing on a showing of The Sound of Music, and lit a cigarette as he sat down at his desk. Something about the blank journal was daunting. His leg bounced as he took a drag and opened it.

_My name is Arthur Fleck and this my therapy journal. I am supposed to right my  
thoughts and feelings here. _

He tried to conjure something else, to remember what his own feelings were, but he came up frustratingly empty-handed. Everything he thought and felt was smothered beneath layers and layers of total numbness, his head waterlogged and stupid. He felt both totally empty and totally full at the same time, full of cotton and nothing else. He could hardly even remember the previous day.

_Today I saw two men fighting outside the BP I think they were homeless. They_  
_were punching each other over and over. They were still there when I_  
_came out._

Arthur extinguished his cigarette in the ash tray and immediately lit another one. His dark hair hung limply in the peripheral of his vision. Behind him, his mother snored softly and regularly to the chorus of ‘Do-Re-Mi’. He added,

_I hope no body was hurt._

Another few minutes of staring at the lined pages passed until Arthur gave up and closed the notebook. Something churned and creaked achingly inside him, moaning as if from far away, so far he couldn’t hear anything but the distant echo of it. He would write it in the book if he knew what it was. Arthur exhaled, a line of smoke escaping him, tapping his middle finger on the desk in time with the bouncing of his leg.

Behind him, his mother honked a startled snore. “Happy, what is that noise?”

“It’s just me, Ma, sorry.” He flattened his hand on the desk and stopped bouncing his leg. Turning towards her, he could see her opening her eyes, squinting against the soft beam of yellow light that came in through the blinds and fell upon her face. A knitted blanket almost as old as Arthur was draped over her torso, making her look as small as a child. He smiled at her and jested, “You gonna sleep all day again?”

“I’m old,” she said somewhat defensively, pulling her white arms out from under the blanket. “When _you’re_ old you can sleep as much as you want.”

“I think Teddy Roosevelt was killing rhinos into his 50s.”

“Bah!” She dismissed him with a wave of her hand. After fishing around for the remote in the chair for a moment, she clicked the channel off The Sound of Music and onto the local news station.

Crushing his cigarette butt into the ash tray, Arthur cautioned, “You shouldn’t be watching that stuff all day, Ma, it’ll rot your brain.” He rose and walked into the kitchenette to pour himself some cold leftover coffee from that morning, glancing at her over the counter. The light from the sun made her blue eyes look almost white, as if she was blind. When she didn’t answer, he asked, “How are your hips feeling? Did you do any walking today?”

Not taking her eyes off the television, she said, “Only to the bathroom and back. I tried to get out to the elevator to check the mail but I got a spasm and that was enough for me.”

“I can get the mail. It’s finally starting to get warm out again, we should go into the city park soon.” He sat down on the adjacent couch, coffee in one hand and cigarette in the other. She finally looked at him and he smiled softly at her.

“You have to eat more than just coffee, you know,” she admonished. “You filled out so nicely in the hospital.”

He didn’t know what to say so he took a drag on his cigarette. Arthur couldn’t tell if he felt hungry at all or if the twisting pain in his stomach was something else. The coffee had a slight mildewed taste so he put the cup on the table in front of him.

The two of them fell into their usual comfortable silence, first watching the news for a time then switching over to a black and white film. By the time the sunlight had become an annoying glare on the television screen, Arthur wasn’t paying attention; he had receded to some quiet place inside himself where his emotions used to be. Where there used to be total virulent chaos that tossed him to and fro, that spilled out of him in tears and wailing, now there was nothing but endless abyss that he struggled against like a drowning swimmer in a black sea, in a black night. On the television, a man and a woman embraced and he spun her around as they kissed, her thin heels cutting a circle in the air. The scene danced off Arthur’s eyes like a reflection in a pond.

After his mother went to bed for the night, Arthur sat down at his desk again and opened the notebook. Slowly and almost cautiously, as if afraid someone might see him do it, he wrote,

_I am so lonely._


	2. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone. Thank you for the lovely comments and kudos on the last chapter of this story. I hope you enjoy this one just as much. Please leave comments letting me know what you think. Enjoy.
> 
> (Sorry the formatting is totally jank, it just be like that sometimes and I'm not smart enough to do anything about it.)

Arthur crawled out of his dreamless sleep as if his psyche weighed a thousand pounds, a giant sack of boulders dragging behind it. There was a dark spot on the couch cushion where saliva had pooled from his open mouth. In the kitchen, the gentle sounds of dishwashing floated over the atmosphere like iridescent bubbles. He made a sound that may have been a question.

“What was that, Happy?” his mother asked in her small voice.

“Whattimeizzit?” he slurred, rubbing the heel of his hand into his eye, making colorful spots dance in the darkness of his vision.

“Oh…” she started, and it seemed to take her far too long to continue, “…about ten-thirty.”

Arthur cursed into the couch cushion. “I have to pick up the dry-cleaning.” He reached for his pack of cigarettes on the table and found it empty. _And cigarettes. _

Arthur’s back was stiff and painful from sleeping on the couch, his naked shoulders twisting gnarled vines of pain into his neck. An ache in his pelvis yawned awake from the bones pressing into the unforgiving material of the cushions. But mostly his head was bothering him, would not awaken, stayed half-submerged in not merely sleep but total unconsciousness, dreamlessness. He swallowed three of his pills from the palm of his hand. Something like resentment growled inside him from far away.

He picked up yesterday’s shirt off the floor and pulled it over his shoulders. There was space in the collar that hadn’t been there since he came home from the hospital, a looseness in his arms and belly. He really wanted a cigarette.

Over the sound of running water, his mother called, “Don’t forget to get my dress from the dry-cleaning, Arthur, and make sure they did a good job with it, that fabric is really very delicate…”

“That’s where I’m going, Ma.” He wriggled his feet into his shoes. “What do you think you need that dress for, anyway? You got a big date I don’t know about?”

She gave a sheepish little chuckle. Her body looked tiny and birdish, her blue-veined hands submerged in a sink of grey water. “Oh, I just…you never know. The time could come up.” She suggested, “You know, you might get married one day and what then?”

“You’re funny.”

Arthur gave her a small peck on the top of her head and left, taking the stairwell down and not bothering with the broken elevator. Graffiti on the descending wall read GET FUCKED.

From across the street Arthur could see inside the big front windows of the dry-cleaners. Standing at the front counter and occasionally ducking into the walls of packaged dry-cleaning was an auburn-haired woman probably ten years younger than himself. Even through the grey tint of the glass he could see the magnificent shine of her hair and the sweet curve of her chest under her emerald sweater. She was making a note on a piece of paper, long strands of her hair falling in front of her large eyes which batted softly behind her thin-framed glasses. She did not see him at all.

His heart did a little nervous flutter in his chest. It took him several anxious minutes of watching her before he was able to cross the street and go inside.

When she looked up from the counter the natural smile on her lips dropped into a flat line. “Good morning, Arthur.”

“Hi, Danny—“

“Danielle.”

“—Danielle. I have a pickup for…”

She was already turned around, swallowed by the maze of hanging clothes wrapped in plastic. He felt alone and oddly exposed. But even worse he could feel how obvious his attraction to her was, his own desire seeming ugly and apeish and horny, and he could feel that she disliked him. 

When she reemerged her disposition seemed to have softened a bit. “It’s nice of you to get this cleaned for your mother,” she said, laying the items of his order over the counter, her full lips an attractive pout on her face when she smiled.

“It…yeah, thanks,” Arthur stammered, a little surprised.

“Mhm,” she replied, glancing at the tag on the cream-colored gown and tapping onto the hard buttons of the cash register. Leaning on the counter, the neckline of her green sweater dipped down in to an attractive V shape, revealing the gentle curves of her breasts. A pleasurable heat started to rise inside him. The register clicked and rolled. “That’s very sweet of you. The two of you live together, right?”

“Right. She’s getting older now, her hips don’t work as well, so I have to do a lot for her.” A little pride dared to make its way into his voice.

“That’s sweet,” she repeated flatly, beginning to examine the rest of the pile. Her big glasses made her features look all the more delicate, and, finally up close to her, Arthur could not help but admire them.

“Well, thank you, Danny—Danielle. You know, you always seemed like a really nice girl to me.” Her mouth twitched and the shape vaguely resembled a smile. Arthur felt a little star of hope blink internally. “I was wondering, what do you like to do outside of here?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she lifted up the hanger on the gown to look at the second garment. It glared yellow and red and checkered blue. She made a slight face at how ugly it was. “What is this?”

Something was rising inside his nervous chest. A small giggle of involuntary laughter escaped his mouth and he captured it in the palm of his hand. He recomposed himself. “I…it’s my costume—uniform. Costume. For my job.”

Danielle was too preoccupied with inspecting the clothing, the garish checkered suit coat, the mustard-colored vest, to hear his laughter. He couldn’t tell if the small dismissive shake of her head was intentional or not. As she began to punch in to the register she asked, “What kind of job makes you dress like this?”

Another laugh, and this time she heard it. He could feel the offense radiating off of her. He wanted to hide. “I’m a…c-clown.”

Now it was Danielle’s turn to laugh, derisive. “Of course you are.”

Shame spiked through the emptiness in his stomach, a thorn tearing the black fabric of his emotional interior.

He tried to salvage the conversation. “N-no, it’s not…” 

She wasn’t looking at him. She was purposefully avoiding him with her eyes, an expression of disgust darkening her features.

“You’re hitting on me at my job, again_, and_ you’re a professional clown,” she sneered. “That’s really creepy.”

His diaphragm contracted painfully, nearly knocking the wind out of him as he burst into a full-bodied laugh. He looked away, not wanting to see the expression of confusion and second-hand embarrassment on her face. Arthur pulled up the sleeve of his cardigan to cover his mouth, cracking up hysterically into the fabric, the force of it so great that he could not keep his mouth closed, his expression twisted into a grimace. Tears of horror and rejection and pain formed in the corners of his eyes.

There was absolutely nothing pleasant about the laughter. The laughter was compulsive, a cruel joke played on him by god and nature that tickled like a cough and came spewing out of him like vomit. Arthur laughed so hard he literally doubled over, and no longer facing her allowed himself to whoop and holler hopelessly into the air, stopping only to gasp for breath.

Her tone now was rigid with irritation. “It’s not that funny.”

“_NO, _I—”

A cackle.

“—it’s—_hahaha!—_I have a---_mmmhahaHA!!_—condition!” He scrambled to reach into his pocket, fumbling for a moment before pulling out what looked like a laminated business card. His hand trembling, he handed it to her. It read:

_Forgive my Laughter:_

_I have a Condition._

_MORE ON BACK_

She obliged.

_It’s a medical condition causing sudden, frequent and uncontrollable laughter that doesn’t match how you feel. It can happen in people with a brain injury or certain neurological conditions. _

_Thank you!_

Danielle looked at him and then back at the card. Arthur was wheezing for breath in between crowish cackles of agony. He extended his hand to take it back.

“Just take your stuff and go,” she said. She looked at him like she was afraid. Somehow that hurt more than anything.

Arthur grabbed the clothing in his arms and slapped the fold of bills on the counter. Once outside the building, he ducked into the first alley he could find, holding the plastic bags against his body as he laughed and laughed and laughed. In the narrow walls of the alley, the sound bounced and echoed so that he could hear himself, the particular screeching tone of his own voice, his birdlike cackling tormenting him from all sides. Arthur turned towards the brick wall and slammed his forehead against it, first holding it there for a moment then doing it again, and again. He felt the skin break against the roughness of the brick, his brain ricocheting inside his skull. A droplet of blood made a ruby tear down his nose, his cheek.

By the time the laughter stopped, Arthur was completely out of breath and slumped against the wall, clutching the dry-cleaning like it was a security blanket. He curled up against it, blood smearing against the plastic. He wiped it away with the tan sleeve of his cardigan, the stain like a smear of lipstick on the fabric. 

On his way home, Arthur paid for a pack of cigarettes in loose change and smoked five, one right after the other.

\---

The walk back to his apartment had been a miserable one, with the dry-cleaning feeling cumbersome thrown over his back. In a gas station bathroom Arthur had splashed his face with water until the dried blood was a pink whirl in the sink. There was a thin stinging gash near the peak of his hairline which undoubtedly would turn into a blue and purple bruise by the next day, and he would cover it with a thick layer of white grease paint so he could sing Old McDonald at an 8 year-old’s birthday. He would not have even needed to dry-clean his costume if the washer and dryer in his apartment did not eat the clothing with their industrial mouths, chewing up the fabric and tearing the threading apart. Arthur remembered the look of derision on Danielle’s face, her pretty features transforming cruelly, and felt something like a wave of nausea overcome him.

As usual, the front door to the lobby of the apartment was wide open, the lock having been broken for as long as Arthur could remember. He considered checking the mailbox but, his body and spirit aching, opted to try his luck at the perennially out-of-order elevator. The thought of taking the stairwell grated on him.

“God dammit…come _on.” _

As Arthur walked through the lobby there was the sound of somebody struggling with the mailbox. A young girl in a long black skirt had her key inserted in the slot and was wrestling with it to turn, the metal door shaking but not moving. A mass of black hair concealed her face as she squatted down to the bottommost row of boxes. There was a stiffness in his empathy that made him hesitate to help her, but after a few moments of watching her he approached anyway.

“I can help you with that,” he said.

She looked up at him. He expected her expression to widen into fear but it didn’t.

“You can? Dude, _thank you, _I’ve been messing with this thing for ten minutes.” She stood up and it was then that Arthur could see her entirely. Shrouded in her dark clothes, her skin appeared almost spectral, her eyes large and girlish. She was a full head shorter than him, her long skirt pinching in to her black sweater pleasantly at her waist. It was hard to tell how old she was; at first glance Arthur could have mistaken her for a teenager.

Arthur took the key and jammed it into the lock roughly once, then again until he felt the metal click into place. For a brief moment he was concerned she would see his clown clothing through the plastic bag but if she did she made no mention of it. He turned the key and the door opened.

Her expression brightened.

“Hey, thanks!” she exclaimed, brushing away the enormous tangle of her hair from her face. Her teeth were small and square behind her pink lips.

He shrugged in response, feeling like his voice had shriveled up. His throat was sore from laughing.

Pulling out a few slim letters from the box, she continued, “That was really cool of you.” Then, “I’m Autumn, by the way.”

For a moment he considered not answering at all, but his interest got the better of him. “Arthur.”

She shoved the letters into a faded grey bag before slinging it over her shoulder. “Thanks for helping me out, Arthur. Every time I try to get into this fucking mailbox it jams. I keep asking for a new lock but they won’t give me one.” Her hands looked tiny inside her large sleeves, a little doll’s hands. Arthur realized he was staring at her and looked away. “That front door is broken, too. And so is the elevator! Is it just sorta like that around here?”

Curiously, he asked, “Did you just move in here?”

“Maybe two months ago, yeah.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She laughed. Arthur felt his mood lighten softly.

She offered, “I live on the fourth floor. What about you?”

“Third.”

She smiled softly at him. “Since I’m above you I’ll be sure to stomp on the floor really hard when you’re sleeping. Roll a bowling ball or something?”

Arthur smiled despite himself but stifled a laugh.

When he didn’t say anything, Autumn continued, “Well, thanks again for the help. I guess I’ll be seeing you around then.” She made her way for the stairwell at the end of the hallway. Before she got too far, she turned around and waved. “Bye, Arthur.”

He raised his free hand and waved at her slowly. He didn’t realize it, but he was still smiling.


	3. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again. I know I'm updating a lot, but I'm feeling particularly inspired and so I've been writing quite a lot. I'll use NaNoWriMo as an excuse. I was told to post this chapter in any case because it is, and I quote, "very horny and very establishing". In other words, basically all the good stuff people are probably waiting for is finally underway. Make sure to leave me a comment if you enjoy this story. Cheers.

“Miss Reed, you have plead guilty to the charge of misdemeanor assault and battery. I understand that that the initial charges were assault with a deadly weapon and assault with the intent to do great bodily harm, but that, due to several mitigating factors, the state was willing to negotiate a lower charge with you.”

“Yes, your Honor.”

“On January 2nd, 1981, you both struck your roommate, Mr. Wagner, over the head with a glass bottle and stabbed him in the back with that same broken bottle. You and your attorney argued that this was done in a fit of manic psychosis, brought on by your bipolar disorder. This was apparently convincing enough to the prosecution, and in the absence of a testimony from Mr. Wagner, I will accept your plea. The penalties for this include up to 93 days in jail, a fine up to $500, and up to two years’ probation. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Judge Kensington stopped flipping through the stack of papers and looked directly at her, hands folded together. “It’s obvious you have problems, Miss Reed. Serious ones. And for that I pity you. But it’s also obvious that you’re smart and educated, and that you ought to know better. And for that, I am holding you accountable. Miss Reed, you should consider yourself extremely lucky. This is not your first assault charge, nor your second. Should I see you in this court again for an act of criminal violence, you _will _be going to jail, or, if you and your attorney are tempted to bring your psychiatric health problems to your defense again, Arkham State Hospital where others who cannot control their violent impulses are detained. Do you understand?”

“I do, sir.”

Kensington began writing on the papers again. “For the charge of misdemeanor assault and battery I sentence you to 18 months’ probation and a continuation of the no contact order between yourself and Mr. Wagner. You are not to assault, beat, molest, or in any way verbally harass, intimidate, threaten, or contact Mr. Wagner, is that clear?”

“Yes, your Honor.”

“You are not to possess any firearms or dangerous weapons. _This includes knives and other cutting utensils. _Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are to continue to receive mandatory psychiatric counseling and to continue to take any medication prescribed to you. Do _not_ go off your medication, Miss Reed.”

“I won’t, your Honor.”

“You are not to ingest any alcohol or illegal drugs. To ensure this, your probation officer will set you up with once a week drug and alcohol testing.”

Autumn grimaced inside but said nothing.

“Finally, you are ordered to pay a fine of $300 to the city of Gotham, and to mandatorily report to your probation officer once a month for the duration of your sentence. Failure to adhere to these conditions will result in a bench warrant for your arrest. Is all of that clear?”

“Yes, sir, it is.”

“You may go meet with your probation officer to go over the conditions of your probation and to schedule drug and alcohol testing. Next case, Roberts versus the people of the city of Gotham.”

And so it was.

\---

It was a little after one AM when Arthur opened the drawer of his desk and began quietly removing the sparse contents. Old bills, paperclips, a plastic pencil sharpener; he put them all to the side so that he could reach the false bottom of the drawer. Inside was just enough space for a single magazine, a copy of _Hustler_ that Arthur had bought, hood up and head down, about a year ago and had remained a standard ever since. The sheer number and variety of women in it had kept him interested in it long enough, and his shyness prevented him from venturing out and getting another one.

Arthur puffed gently on the cigarette between his lips. A white woman with short blonde hair smiled broadly at him from the cover, her slender hips popped out playfully. She was wearing a red, white, and blue bikini and holding a blue balloon with a white star on it. He opened it, flipped past a few of his less favorite pictures, an advertisement for Trojan condoms, and an article about D.B. Cooper, until he found an old favorite that suited him. It was less explicit than some of the other photos, a tan brunette woman sitting nude on a director’s chair and smiling at him, but the implied intimacy and sweetness of her expression aroused him as much as her nakedness.

The reality is that he had been horny all day, from the moment he saw Danielle through the dirty window of the dry-cleaners to when he helped that woman open her mailbox, her face smiling kindly at him in gratitude. His body, the betrayer, stiff with erection even as he’s being berated, even as the object of his desire hates him and mocks him. Laughing and coming and wanting to fuck, pathetic.

Absentmindedly, he was fondling himself through his underwear. Even though his mother was fast asleep and rarely woke during the night, he felt that she could open the bedroom door any moment, and the combination of danger and guilt turned up the dial on the hot electricity buzzing in his groin.

He wanted to fuck and he wanted to be touched. He wanted to want and be wanted.

The reading light on his desk was a harsh yellow, casting a glare on the shiny pages of the magazine. Arthur turned the page. A woman rested on her knees with her legs spread, groping her breasts, her head tilted back in ecstasy. There was a thick bush of dark hair between her legs and the apeish thing in the back of his teeth salivated, a hungry dog lusting after a bone. He ashed his cigarette into the black tray and turned the page again.

A dark-skinned woman pinching the thick nipples of her large breasts, the dark rings of her hair cascading down the slender lines of her shoulders. Her skin seemed to gleam under the light on his desk. He could feel the head of his cock becoming slick with fluid, his mouth becoming tight and hard as his concentration built.

Two women fucking, one eating the other out.

A light-skinned black girl spreading her pussy with her fingers.

A blonde-haired woman on all fours with her pink asshole facing the camera. He flipped through.

Arthur’s prick was a sturdy rod in his hand now, his fist curling around it and rubbing the swollen head with his palm. With his free hand he held the nearly-finished cigarette away from his mouth, his breathing starting to pick up as jolts of pleasure shot into his belly.

Red-headed twin girls. A Japanese woman with her hands bound. A white woman fingering herself.

Arthur had forgotten about his cigarette which was dead between the fingers of his left hand, hopelessly jerking off at his desk, the bones of his shoulders and back prominent in the harsh light. Flipping the page once more, looking for one more fresh hit of female sexuality before he came, he turned to a centerfold of a fair-skinned woman laid on a black fur rug. She beckoned him with a mane of soft black hair that framed her small, round breasts, a mere smile decorating her pretty mouth. Instantly Arthur imagined that she was the nice girl from the apartment above him and that he was touching her, putting his mouth on her small, pink nipples, the supple white curves of her ass in his hand as she sat on him and kissed him and loved him.

Within seconds he was coming into his hand with a weak moan, his final, fleeting fantasy that the kind apartment girl wanted his come inside her and asked him for it. His come now soaking the inside of his underwear, he tried to take a hit off his cigarette and found it was out. Arthur hid his magazine back in its usual spot before cleaning himself off in the shower, thinking about Autumn on the black rug, her kind eyes and sweet mouth.

Before Arthur took his sleeping pill he took the magazine out one more time. Using his mother’s pair of fabric scissors, he cut out the picture of the dark-haired woman and taped it onto a blank page in his notebook. He took his pill and was asleep twenty minutes later, dreaming of nothing.

\---

Autumn’s adrenaline spiked when she looked at the names of the senders on her mail. The Gotham City district court. A letter from her attorney. Another letter from her attorney. Her low blood pressure was cured by the mail.

She put them on the kitchen table and promised to get to them later.

In her bedroom, her full sized bed was pressed into the far corner, the window above it letting in the first warm breeze of the season. Beside it, a nightstand with a radio/cassette player, and a small black table covered in a tattered grey cloth. A plaster statue of a goat rearing onto its hind legs stood in the center. Three concentric circles of black stones surrounded it, flanked by red candles on either side. With the flick of a lighter, incense burned delightfully on the sill of her window, filling the room with a sweet herbal scent.

Two more clicks. The red candles on the altar were aflame. On the bed a grey, long-haired cat watched silently with large, curious eyes.

Autumn took a small bag off the black table and opened it. Inside was a deck of cards, black and silver that shimmered in the dim light. She turned one over to admire it. A skeleton reaped a human head with a sickle, a bushel of beautiful roses behind him. She turned it over and began to shuffle.

Without anything specific in mind, she drew a single card.

The Lovers.

Two human skeletons embraced against a night sky, a crescent moon shining iridescent above them, their mouths open in either ecstasy or agony. She chuckled to herself, amused. Three more cards beneath the first.

The Fool. The two of cups. The Moon.

She pulled two more cards, placing them underneath the trio.

The nine of swords. The three of cups, inverted.

The skeletons held three beautiful silver goblets which spilled mercury-colored tea from the sky, an ecstatic and impossible dance of joy and terror, while the corpse on the card beside them wept, impaled by a flurry of swords through the spaces in its ribs.

One more.

The Tower.

“Interesting,” she mused to herself. The cat nuzzled up against her arm.

Very interesting.


	4. 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again. I hope you're all enjoying this story. My style so far has been to write shorter chapters, I do this because I feel it fits the narrative flow better and it also allows me to put out more writing more quickly. What do you all think of this? I'm also still messing with the formatting, so I appreciate your patience with me. Thank you for all kudos, bookmarks, and comments you leave me, it really encourages me to keep writing. Thank you!

Arthur sat down in the chair across from his counselor and immediately lit a cigarette. He didn’t feel particularly counseled by her. She was more of a case manager.

“Good afternoon, Arthur,” she greeted him. She spoke like he was in trouble for something. “I’m sorry we don’t have a lot of time today, I’m running behind.” He blinked, not sorry at all. A poster behind her warned of the dangers of consuming alcohol. “How were things this week?”

Arthur debated telling her the truth. He decided against it. “Fine.”

“And how is work? I understand you got a job as a…” She glanced at her notes. Her voiced soured a little. “…party clown.”

He sucked on his cigarette and nodded. Arthur’s foot was tapping rapidly against the floor. “It’s good. I’ve had a few gigs already, mostly children’s events. I feel like they like me more than the adults do.” A soft laugh came up in his chest like a cough.

“And why did you pick this instead of something you’ve done before? It says here that before you were in the hospital you did some factory work. This seems pretty different. Why a clown?”

“I like to make people laugh,” he said matter-of-factly.

“That’s got to be pretty unstable. Certainly something like factory work is more consistent.”

Inside, Arthur thought, because I’d rather kill myself than do something like that again. I would literally rather die.

He repeated, “I just want to make people laugh.”

The caseworker sighed as if he was being unreasonable but moved on. “And how are you feeling, emotionally? Are you having any negative thoughts?”

Arthur laughed under his breath and vaguely hoped she couldn’t tell it was genuine. His foot tapped and tapped. The cigarette was a smokeless nub of ash and he put it out in the tray. He anxiously tugged on the sleeves of his cardigan, avoiding looking at her.

“Are the medications working?”

A chuckle tickled inside his throat and he did nothing to stop it, just laughed totally openly for a few seconds. His unwashed hair, slicked back with sweat, felt heavy and sticky on his scalp. The gash near his hairline had softened to a thin dark line.

“Arthur, last week we talked about you keeping a journal to record your feelings. How is that coming? Did you go get a journal?”

She was doing that thing where she slowed her speech down and talked to him like he was fucking retarded, dumber than a log. He’d heard people talk to dogs with more dignity. A fanged creature hiding in his gumline snarled and wailed and dug its nails into the tissue of his ribs. He thought about telling her to shut up and fuck off. The desire caught an anchor on its foot and drowned in the dark ocean where the fountain of his emotions used to be.

“Yes.”

A beat. “And how is that going? Did you bring it?”

“No. It’s fine. I’ve been writing in it.”

Her voice was lined with impatience. “Well, I’d like you to bring it to our appointments from now on so we can talk about how you’re doing.”

He nodded. “When can I see the doctor again?”

She sighed, and this time it didn’t feel entirely pointed at him. “The doctor’s on vacation in Egypt until next month.”

“Next _month?” _Exasperated, he lit another cigarette. “I was going to ask him to increase my medication.”

The caseworker made a note. “Which one?”

“Whichever one makes…I’m having trouble sleeping.” _Whichever one stops everything from hurting me. _

Still writing, she replied, “I can probably get a physician’s assistant to increase your dose. I’ll let you know next time. For now I want you to keep writing in your journal, and make sure to bring it next time.”

As Arthur was leaving another person was entering right behind him, an endless line of impoverished, unlucky, and ill to do their time with the state-assigned counselor. Hundreds of drugs addicts, hundreds of schizophrenics, hundreds of prostitutes, hundreds of parents and their hungry children; hundreds of manila folders, hundreds of lives. Arthur’s name swallowed up in paperwork.

In the alley behind the building, Arthur leaned against the concrete wall. He rolled up his sleeve and, with the red hot end of his cigarette, pressed the cherry to the inside of his forearm. The flesh sizzled with lightning pain, the sinewy muscles of his arm tensing under his skin, before the nerves died completely and there was nothing, at all.

Arthur tried to cry but couldn’t.

\---

The elevator door opened with a weak ding and an exhausted metal sound. At the end of the short hallway Arthur could see through the open doorway of the laundry room that Autumn was lifting her damp clothes out of the washing machine and transferring them to the dryer. A sensation of excitement tickled in him even as something pessimistic wondered if she would be friendly to him again or if her perception of him would sour in the unflattering white light of the laundry room.

She was wearing black again, her clothing a pleasant hug against her slender figure, her silhouette a womanly taper from her ribs to her waist to her hips. She looked like a blot of ink on the white background of the apartment walls. When she saw him approaching she did a small double-take and smiled pleasantly. He waved at her.

“Oh, hey! Arthur, right?” He nodded. “Funny meeting you here.”

He gestured to his bag, noncommittal, and opened the washer beside her. “Laundry day.”

Up close he could see that her hair was quite long and very full, a volume of dark waves hanging vinelike to the end of her ribcage, making her appear small and elflike. She took a pair of her little underwear out of the washer and pretended not to notice.

There was a beat of silence between them. Arthur, admittedly feeling a bit courageous, asked, “You come here often?”

She smiled, and so did he.

“I probably should come here more often, I put it all off ‘til the last minute and now I to do this all day.”

Her black pants cut off just above the knee and hugged pleasantly against her thighs. Tucked into her waistline, her black long-sleeve shirt said _Dino’s _in red cursive just above her left breast. She caught him looking and laughed a little. “Sorry, my work uniform is the only thing that’s clean right now. I waitress over at Dino’s, that diner over on Murphy street.” She gestured with her thumb.

“Yeah, I think I’ve walked by there before.”

“It’s not glamorous or anything, but it’s an alright gig. We have good pie. You should come in some time.”

“That sounds nice. I think I’d like that.” Arthur realized he had stopped loading his laundry and returned to putting it in the washer again. There was a small lull in the conversation and Arthur hungered for more. He tried, “Have you had any more trouble with your mailbox?”

“Fortunately not. I think whatever you did, did the trick. Are you always that helpful, or was that just for me?”

Heat rose into Arthur’s face and he hoped he wasn’t blushing. He went to say something but felt a laugh coming on and swallowed it heavily.

Autumn chuckled and took a big handful of her wet clothing to put into the dryer. “I’m just teasing! Sorry if I’m making you uncomfortable with all the conversation, Arthur. I just moved over to this side of the city and I don’t really know anyone yet.”

His voice coming back to him, he replied, “No, I don’t mind. You said you’ve been here around two months already?”

“Right. Usually I’m alright at making friends but…pardon my language, Arthur, but everyone here is rude as fuck! I think you were the first person to be nice to me, honestly.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. The profanity coming out of her little doll’s mouth was comical. A visual of Scrappy Doo floated across his memory. “Well, you said it, not me. I’m sure there are some other kind people out there. I haven’t found them yet, though.”

It seemed like she was looking at him, really looking at him, without fear or disgust or resentment but actual genuine interest. A pang of paranoia jolted through him and he realized he couldn’t tell if it was real or just wishful thinking on his part. He removed a half-opened roll of quarters from his pocket and took his time peeling back the paper.

He asked, “You live here with your parents then?”

She laughed. “_Ha! _Gag me with a spoon. No, I live by myself.”

He thought for a moment then said, for some reason, “I live with my m…mother.” Instantly regretting it, he added quickly, “She’s unwell. I take care of her.”

“That’s very nice of you,” Autumn replied, closing the dryer door and starting to put some quarters of her own into the machine. Her expression was a little wolfish. “You’re a better person than I am. If my mom was ‘unwell’ it would be because I pushed her down the stairs.”

He let himself chuckle darkly.

She continued, “But no, it’s good you have that kind of relationship. My parents suck. I’m here by myself.”

“How old are you?” he asked. Wincing on the inside, he clarified, “Sorry, I didn’t mean…that sounded creepy, sorry.”

The machine started to roll and made an ancient mechanical rumbling sound. “Nah, I know what you mean. I’m twenty-one. You got the time?”

“I think it’s around eleven.”

“Alright, well, I have to get going. But it was nice talking to you, Arthur from the third floor.”

“Fleck,” he offered. “Arthur Fleck.”

“Arthur Fleck,” she repeated. “It was nice talking to you, Arthur Fleck. Make sure to come see me at Dino’s if you get the chance. It would be nice to see a friend, for once.”

As she walked away, Arthur allowed himself to feel a little pride. He felt smooth. Once she was on the elevator and out of earshot a hysterical cackle escaped him and he didn’t bother to try and hide it.

He brushed his teeth and washed his hair before returning to the basement to turn over his laundry, but Autumn had already come and gone.


	5. 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the wonderful comments and likes I've received so far. I'm really enjoying writing this story for you all. This really was a story just for me at the outset, but the reception has been so positive that I'm grateful I decided to share it with everyone. I hope this coming chapter resonates with you. Cheers. xx

Arthur was writing furiously in his journal, his hand barely moving fast enough to keep up with the racing of his thoughts. Every few seconds a chuckle bubbled in his throat, occasionally rising to a full-blown cackle that stopped him in his tracks until he could catch his breath again. A droplet of snot landed on the page and made a darkened circle there.

_why am I not good enough to be loved I exist to be punished there is_

_no love for me I exist to be tortured why do I exist my god_

_there is nothing for me i am nothing nothing nothing_

_nothing nothing nothing_

He took his prescription sleeping pills and poured them into a cereal bowl at his desk. The physician’s assistant had recently refilled the prescription, and increased the dose too, and several dozen huge, fat pills spilled out, looking big as dice, covering the bottom of the bowl. With the handle-end of a hammer he began crushing them to dust. His body trembled with laughter.

_it’s like i don’t even exist i am nothing nothing nothing _

Arthur wiped his nose with the back of his hand, his mouth pulled into a compulsive grin. The powder looked like cocaine in the bottom of the bowl, the hammer dusted white on the desk. With trembling hands, he poured a fraction of it into a glass of water and stirred it with his finger. He took a small sip and it was revolting, bitter. He took a big gulp of it regardless.

_i am nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing_

A cackle, his big crow’s laugh, cracking up. Another gulp, the glass almost empty.

_nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing _

_nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing _

_nothing nothing nothing nothing_

“_What_ is so darn funny out here, Happy?”

Behind him, his mother emerged from the open doorway, her voice syrupy with sleep. Arthur snorted up the snot in his nose but did not turn around.

“Nothing mom,” he said. His voice sounded juvenile even to him and he resented it. “Just—_hehehe—_writing in my th-therapy journal.”

“Well, please keep it down, Arthur, it’s very late.”

He heard her go back into her bedroom, the door closing behind her. He stifled a laugh, clasping the pen so hard in his hand he thought he might snap in half. More droplets making dark spots on his journal, this time coming from his eyes.

Arthur poured the bowl of pill dust down the toilet. He slept all the rest of the night and most of the next day.

\---

Silent, except for the total uproarious laughter.

The room was sterile white except for the two men sitting across the table from one another. The psychiatrist’s swarthy complexion and checkered shirt, and Arthur’s dark, oily hair stood as outliers against the hospital walls. The words OBSERVATION ROOM were painted in bold letters on the wall behind the psychiatrist’s head. Arthur’s unrestrained cackling surrounded them in the small room.

“And why do you think you’re here, Arthur?” he asked. It sounded as if he was attempting a sympathetic tone but the emptiness of his eyes betrayed his indifference.

Arthur laughed and laughed. He scratched his nails into the skin of his left arm, trails of white following behind them on the flesh. His body rocked back and forth gently in the seat.

“I f-feel _bad, _doc,_” _he choked out between peals of laughter. “Really really _bad!_”

The psychiatrist scribbled something down on his notepad and the condescending sound of his writing made Arthur churn with hatred. His teeth felt sharp and wicked. He tapped his foot furiously against the white floor.

“Did you try to hurt yourself, or somebody else?” the doctor asked. If he glanced up from his notepad, Arthur didn’t see it. More unrepressed laughter. Arthur’s left hand seemed to take on a mind of its own and crawled up the side of his head like a spider, plucking out a few hairs from his scalp. It hurt, but felt good, too. Pluck. Giggle.

The psychiatrist continued, talking to him in the sort of even tone with which you might talk to a child, “Arthur, it says here you choked your coworker at the factory and tried to put his head under a metal press. That’s very serious. Do you agree?”

Hearty laughter. Full, body-shaking, mouthfuls of laughter.

More writing.

Arthur began to sing,

_“Grey skies are gonna clear up_

_Put on a happy face_

_Brush off the clouds and cheer up_

_Put on a happy face…”_

The psychiatrist looked up this time, watching Arthur as he sang, Arthur’s expression pulled into a jack-o-lantern grin. Tapping his foot and snapping his fingers adeptly to the beat, an unexpected swagger in the rhythm of his body, Arthur continued,

_“Take off the gloomy mask of tragedy_

_It’s not your style_

_You’ll look so good that you’ll be glad you_

_Decided to smile!”_

A peal of almost maniacal cackling, Halloween laughter, and Arthur was slamming his head onto the metal table. The doctor stood and made a beckoning gesture with his hand towards the one-way mirror, bringing two orderlies in green scrubs into the room. Behind him, the rhythmic sound of Arthur banging his head.

Clinically, the psychiatrist said, “Give him five milligrams of haloperidol and watch him for a few hours. If he hasn’t calmed down by then give him another five milligrams.”

It took five orderlies, one on each limb and one to hold the syringe, to restrain Arthur enough to inject him with the antipsychotic. He kicked frantically, his white shoe colliding with the side of a young male’s head and sending a splatter of blood flying from his mouth at which Arthur snickered emphatically. It was when they came towards him with the syringe that his expression changed and he shrieked and screamed and cried out for his mother. A prick in his flesh and in seconds he was out. Two hours later he awoke and his nose had bled all down the front of his face, turning the lower half of his skull into a red mask.

In the observation room, Arthur smashed his head into the door again and again.

\---

When Arthur finally woke up, it was 8pm.

He groaned miserably into the couch cushion. Beside him, his mother was crocheting and watching an infomercial about kitchen appliances.

“Why didn’t you wake me up, ma?” he moaned. Arthur’s tongue felt heavy in his mouth. It was hard to open his eyelids.

“You need the rest,” she chided in her frail voice, not looking away from the television. “You’re up so late. It’s like that medication doesn’t do anything. You should ask your doctor to give you more.”

He laughed. It hurt.

She continued, her eyes darting between her project and the screen, “I managed to make it downstairs today but there was nothing in the mailbox and by the time I got there my hip hurt so badly, I just had to come back up. But you were still sleeping, my tired boy.”

Arthur picked up one of his shirts from the chair in his mother’s bedroom and pressed his nose into it. It smelled like cigarettes but was otherwise clean. He pulled it on and started to button it, his skin feeling icy cold. As he covered himself in a rust-colored sweater he said, “Mom, you really shouldn’t be going out anywhere in your condition. What if you had fallen?”

“Well, what was I supposed to do? You were out like a light. I had to check to make sure you were still breathing.” As he was tightening the belt on his grey slacks another notch, his mother asked him, “Where are you going?”

“To see a friend. Do you need anything?”

She shook her head, her pale fingers working, the silver needles clicking together. She made a strange face and Arthur asked, “What?”

His mother blinked. “You have friends?”

\---

By the time Arthur made it to the diner night was fully upon them and he had missed the warm springtime air of the morning. The temperature had dropped considerably and the atmosphere was damp with recent rain. Beneath his faded yellow jacket Arthur was surprisingly cold. He spared his usual hesitation and went directly inside, a bell above the door tinkling metallically and he entered. The place was almost completely empty.

Sitting on a red bar stool, Autumn was polishing silverware with a rag. At the sound of the bell, she looked up towards the doorway. Her face brightened into a smile. “Look who it is. Hey, Arthur.”

As he sat down in a booth he asked, “I’m not bothering you, am I?”

She scoffed and gestured to the vacant restaurant. Two men sat in a back corner eating but other than that it was empty. “I’m not exactly busy,” she replied. He smiled at her and even though he meant it the expression was painful, tired. She brought him a mug, carrying a fresh pot of coffee in free hand. “Don’t tell me you went out of your way to come down here,” she said, pouring him a cup.

“Well, I was going to kill myself but I decided to do this instead.”

She laughed. “Yeah, you and me both.”

He put his hands around the mug, his thin fingers cold from the evening air. The mug was already warm and stung his palms pleasantly with heat. Autumn sat down in the seat across from him. She was wearing the same uniform he’d seen her in before, but her long black hair was pulled up into a voluminous ponytail, dark tendrils hanging down around the frame of her face.

“You look sad, Arthur. What’s on your mind?”

Arthur thought to himself that he must look _really _miserable if someone was taking notice. “Ah, just…tired. It’s nothing. “

She smirked knowingly. “Keep your secrets then. So tell me, Mr. Arthur, what is it you do, when you’re not lying to me about your feelings?”

Anxiously pulling on a loose thread in his sleeve, he answered, “I’m, erm, I’m actually a clown.”

“No shit. Like a _clown _clown? Like a real clown?”

“Like a real clown, yeah.”

“No shit!” she repeated, shocking him with the enthusiasm in her voice. “I used to know some guys who were really into stuff like that, clowning, mime, stage magic. I love it, it’s like performance art.”

He couldn’t suppress a pleased expression, and for the first time in a few days it was one that didn’t hurt. She seemed genuinely impressed. 

“Do you have the whole getup? Like the face paint and stuff?” she asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“Can you do magic?”

“A little.”

“Can you juggle?”

“Yes. But…not very well, actually,” he admitted. “I just like to make people laugh. There’s still a lot I’m learning how to do. I was interested in it for a while but I only just got this job a few months ago, after I…”Arthur trailed off. He took a sip of his coffee. It was acrid on his palate.

Autumn seemed to be waiting for him. “After you what?”

“Nothing. You know this is probably the most anyone’s ever asked me about that.”

“That’s a shame, ‘cause that sounds fucking groovy. Do you want a piece of pie?”

“No, thank you.”

“Come on, it’s on me.”

“Sure, alright.”

“Apple or cherry?”

“Cherry.”

When Autumn came back from the kitchen she had cut him a big piece of cherry pie, the red fruit glistening under the crust like rubies. On top was a thick dollop of whipped cream. Arthur was probably hungry but couldn’t feel it; it had been at least an entire day since he’d last eaten. As she set the plate in front of him, the black sleeve of her shirt rode up just past her wrist. Arthur caught sight of three dark, horizontal lines over her wrist, thick and prominent on her fair complexion. She must have caught him looking because she pulled the fabric down and averted her eyes. She cleared her throat quietly. “Go ahead,” she said. “You’ll like it.”

Arthur put the image out of his mind, but felt something small and sympathetic dig its roots into his belly. He cut a bit with his fork and took a bite. “It’s delicious,” he said.

“I knew you’d like it.” She rubbed her wrist absentmindedly. Arthur tried not to notice.

“I feel like I’ve been talking a lot. What about you? What do you do? Outside of being a waitress.”

“You’ll laugh.”

“Autumn, I just told you I’m a clown for a living, what’s funnier than that?”

She smirked, a ripple of sheepishness seeming to come over her suddenly. Arthur took another bite of pie to appease her. “I’m a tarot reader,” she said finally.

“I’ve heard of that before,” he replied. “Like fortune telling?”

“Sort of. I don’t really think of it as fortune telling, so to speak. It’s more like a mirror. Shows you what you are and what is, and from that you can make inferences on what’s to come.”

He thought for a moment then asked, “Could you do mine?”

“I’d love to.”

After the men in the back of the diner paid, the two of them had the restaurant to themselves. Arthur continued to tell her about Carnival, his clown persona that he’d been experimenting with for several years before being hired at Ha-Ha’s, an agency for party performers. The job was, as his counselor put it, unstable, with Arthur only receiving one or two paying gigs a week, but enjoyable. Between that and his mother’s disability checks, they were able to just barely make it by, and the creative outlet was good for his heart. “A lot of the time I even get to dance, sing,” he explained. “And I’ve been coming up with some original jokes. I think they’re pretty good.”

“Oh, really? Tell me one, then. Make me laugh.”

“Okay…What did the straitjacket say to the uptight mental patient?”

“I don’t know.”

“_Loosen up.”_

She chuckled good-naturedly, and Arthur felt the cobwebs shake off some tired part of him, some part that he had not felt in a long time, or maybe ever. Autumn snuck three apples from the cooler in the back of the restaurant and dared him to juggle; Arthur tossed them into the air, got maybe five rotations through, then dropped them to the ground. Autumn screeched with laughter. She took a spoon and scooped the remaining whipped cream off Arthur’s pie and flung it at him, missing. She licked the empty spoon, smiling at him.

At around ten o’clock another waitress and several line cooks began entering the diner. Autumn stood up from the booth to conceal her camaraderie with him. Arthur detected a little timidness in Autumn’s voice as she suggested, “The night crew is about to come on and I’ll be free. Did you wanna come back to my place? I can read your tarot.”

“I think I would like that.”

“Don’t worry about your bill, I got it.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.”

Arthur hoped she would try to hold his hand on the way back, but she didn’t.

\---

Autumn’s apartment was sparsely furnished but clean and covered in pictures and houseplants. Framed posters of musicians and films covered the walls: a reprint of the flier for a Japanese horror film, 1932’s _Nosferatu, _several punk bands that Arthur had never heard of, and, surprisingly, the album cover to Rod Stewart’s “Blondes Have More Fun”.

“Rod’s awesome,” she explained.

A fluffy grey cat emerged from behind a large house plant and approached them with a welcoming trill. “This is Robert Smith, but I call him Robbie. Like The Cure, you know?”

“Who?” he puzzled, stroking his fur.

“I’ll forgive you for that.”

The two of them sat down at her kitchen table and she produced a small cloth pouch from her bedroom. Inside was a deck of cards, black, and Arthur could see that they were detailed in brilliant luminous silver. She pulled a couple cards out and laid them on the table. All of the figures were skeletal, some depicted in action and some just images of bones and skulls, and all of the cards were accompanied by silver flowers, the color of mercury. They reminded Arthur of the moon’s reflection on black waters.

“Why are they all skeletons?” he asked.

“Because life and death touch each other,” she explained. “The cards tell you about your life through the imagery of death. Also skeletons look real fuckin’ cool. Come closer to me.”

Arthur was happy to. He moved his chair nearer to her, until the two of they were no more than a foot apart. This was the closest he’d ever been to her. She’d pulled her thick hair down from the ponytail and the locks spilled over her shoulders and down her back, the smell of her shampoo and the warmth of her presence intoxicating to him.

She continued, “The tarot is broken into two major classes: the major and minor arcana. The minor arcana are specific and personal, they’re all the jobs you get a relationships you start, particular events, things like that. The major arcana are the prime narratives of your life. They’re especially significant. Everything we want to know about ourselves we can find in the major and minor arcana. They’re representative of the archetypal experiences of being a person in the world. Just by having a consciousness the stories in the cards will relate to you. Does that make sense?”

“I think so. How do we do it?”

She scooped the cards back into the deck and handed it to him. “Shuffle it and we’ll go from there.”

He felt awkward and unsure but started shuffling them anyway. “For how long?”

“As long as you want.”

“Alright,” he said after a few moments of moving the cards in his hands, “what now?”

“Well, there are many different spreads you can do, but this is one I use all the time. The first card is going to represent yourself.”

He pulled a card off the top and laid it down, face up.

The Fool.

“Oh, wow,” she marveled. “That’s a great one.”

The card depicted a grinning skeleton in an array of elaborate garments, the clothing seeming to shimmer iridescent in the light, his leg raised as if in dance. Before him was the edge of a cliff off which he threatened to fall. A snake slithered into a coil up his leg.

“What does it mean?” he asked.

“The Fool is so potent, so fortunate that this is your personal card. My personal card is the moon; very cool, but maybe not as cool as yours!” She admired the card for a moment before continuing, “The Fool is nothing—well, nothing in particular. He contains all possibilities within him and can become anything. See how he’s in the act of dance?” She pointed to his raised leg with a long, pointed fingernail. “He’s ever in the act of becoming, never simply being. And of course he’s very flamboyant! He could easily be a clown, don’t you think?”

Arthur agreed. Something about the skeleton, his permanent smile, both disturbed and compelled him.

“Now draw two cards. Those are going to give us some context. Tell us a little something about Arthur.”

Arthur drew, and laid them horizontally beneath the first.

The page of cups, inverted. The knight of wands.

“Oh. I see you’re a very creative person, but I didn’t need any cards to tell me that. I also see a lot of conflict for you—internally, I mean. Fire boiling up the water in you, turning to smoke, disappearing…” Flowers poured out of the inverted skull of the page like a waterfall; the knight brandished a lily as a sword, facing the opposite direction. She added, almost to herself. “…sitting on a wellspring of emotion, repressed.”

Arthur suddenly felt like there was a spotlight on him. He his gaze moved between the Fool, his ecstatic dance, and the ferocious expressions of the other cards. A conflict inside him. An overflowing of emotion. The coy but erotic flowers in between the fingers of the corpse. A subtle thing slithered knowingly in Arthur’s belly.

She must have felt that low stirring inside him because she asked, “Do you want to keep going?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Draw three more cards. This will be the major narrative of your life.”

The three of swords. The ace of wands. The Devil.

“Yikes,” he said.

Autumn explained, “It’s not what you think. The Devil is your shadow. Everybody has one. I would try not to be afraid of it.” The three of swords depicted a human heart penetrated by sabers, silver laurel bordering the frame of the card. The ace was a single rose. The Devil shown two skeletons embraced as if lovers, one being strangled with a serpent by the other behind it. She continued, “I see an uprising of some sort, one emerging from inside your heart. There’s something in there that wants to come out. Does that sound familiar at all to you?”

In his mind, Arthur thought about the psychiatric hospital. He thought about his laugh. He discretely plucked at the hair along the nape of his neck. “I’m not sure. Maybe.”

“Maybe it hasn’t happened yet. There’s something in there, though. Like a serpent in the dark.”

The snake on the Fool’s foot, around the victim’s neck. A chill went up Arthur’s body from his feet to his head. He thought he might laugh but he didn’t.

“Two more.” It was almost a command now.

The eight of swords. Death.

Eight daggers destroying a skull, severing the jawbone to pieces, penetrating the eye socket, an inaudible moan of agony crawling from the open mouth like a spider; the reaper grinning as it collected a human head, the crown upon him glistening under the kitchen light.

Autumn’s voice was a little softer now.

“One more.”

Judgment.

Silence blanketed them both. Autumn’s eyes darted all around the spread, her fingers touching her delicate mouth. Arthur could tell she was seeing something he wasn’t, but he didn’t know what. The gravity in the room seemed to increase.

After a moment, she said, “You’ve had so much pain in your life.”

Arthur swallowed. “How can you tell?”

“Because I’m looking.”

A look passed across Autumn’s face and for a moment Arthur thought she might cry. Instead she smiled softly and gave a dismissive scoff. “These things…they’re silly aren’t they?”

“No…they’re not. You’re right. There is a lot of pain in my life.” It was a surprise to hear himself say it out loud.

“I know there is,” she said, her voice intimate and almost sad. “I can feel it. You think I can’t see you but I can.” She seemed to catch herself and added, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be so forward.”

“No, I…believe you. I see you, too.”

The two of them were very close now. Her little finger was brushing up against his on the table, her knee gently pressing into his own. The contact was electric for him, and burning with heat. Her long, dark hair fell in wild and wavy tendrils down her shoulders, past her petite chest, her face appearing alabaster white under the black tresses.

“I’m going to say something weird now. Promise you won’t judge me?” she asked.

“I won’t.”

“I’d really like to kiss you,” she said.

Arthur’s heart rate immediately increased. Heat was rising into his face. He tried to respond but he voice was caught in his throat.

“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” she assured him.

“No,” he replied, a little quickly. “I-I want to.”

The space was closing between them. Arthur could feel the warmth of her breath and smell the natural and inoffensive scent of her body.

Their lips were about to touch.

“I…I’ve never done this before,” he whispered, his soft voice nearly lost in the warm space between their mouths.

Her mouth was a sweet smile, just for him. “That’s okay.”

Arthur closed his eyes and allowed her to kiss him. She gently pressed against his mouth, softly capturing his bottom lip. Her lips were two soft cushions against his own, leading him through the unfamiliar motions of intimacy. He moved his mouth delicately on hers, following her movements, conscientious of his own inexperience. He felt her small hand on his knee and placed his own over it, her skin supple against his. She gave his knee a small squeeze and a subtle jolt of pleasure made its way into his groin. For a moment he nervously worried about having an erection in front of her but lost the thought in the sensation of her want of him.

Arthur’s heart was a pulse in the vein of his neck. The tip of her tongue brushed up against his top lip and something, maybe a noise of enjoyment, threatened to escape his throat. There was a pressure building in his head.

He suddenly felt like he was going to cough.

Not a cough.

Without a moment’s warning Arthur was pulling away from her, hiding his face in his sleeve, as a big, uproarious laugh burst out of his mouth. Autumn pulled away, her hand still resting on his leg, her eyes large in surprise.

“Wh-what’s so funny?” she asked, her own mouth turning upwards in a nervous smile. Her cheeks flushed pink. Arthur could tell she was embarrassed and his heart wilted.

“_HAHA! _No p-please—_Hahahaha!!- _I…” He fumbled hopelessly through the pockets of his jacket, trying to find his cards. He placed his hand on his collarbone as if to steady his chest, gasping for breath as his body forced all the air out of him. He closed his eyes, not wanting to look at her and not wanting to see her staring at him. As he handed her the card, the laughter seemed to subside slightly, reduced to an intermittent chuckling. “I’m s—_hehehe—_s-sorry. It’s a…it’s a condition I have—_HAHAHA!_”

Autumn flipped the card over, her brows furrowed. “Oh, this is like…it’s like Tourette’s?”

Still chuckling, he replied, “S-sort of.”

She handed it back to him and he took it, his hand shaking. “You scared me for a second, I thought something was really wrong with you! An ex-boyfriend of mine had Tourette’s, he used to have tics like that.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“You have nothing to be sorry about.” She brushed her hair behind her ear, the flush starting to fade from her face. Arthur’s laughter sank slowly back into his chest. Despite what she said, his insides were gnarled with embarrassment. “Are you okay? Do you want some water?”

“Yes, please.”

He sipped on the water and said, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It just startled me. How often does that happen?”

“Enough.”

She nodded. “I get it. I mean, I don’t, but…you get what I’m trying to say.” A beat. She placed her hand over his, brushing their fingers together. Arthur felt himself soften inside. She said, “I like you, Arthur. I think there’s something really similar about us. I wear some pain that people can see, too.”

He thought about the scarring on her arms. Their fingers tangled together. “I like you too, Autumn.”

She leaned in and kissed him again.


	6. 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again. Here is just a short one I wrote this morning. Was having some urges to explore Autumn more since some of you said you were enjoying her character. I'm really growing to like her. Hope you are, too.

When Autumn awoke it was five AM and her back was killing her.

In the bathroom she reached her arms up and the pale skin of her back stretched tight as a tarp over the hard, prominent bones of her back, skeleton revealing itself in the movements like a ghost beneath a sheet.

She stepped on the scale. 107.4. Lame.

Take her medicine. Take the bus to her probation office. Piss in a cup. Tell the probation officer she’s been a good little girl. Go and slave her life away, 12 hours a day, sometimes more, and come back to her apartment to take the pills that put her immediately to sleep. No time for anything but medicine and meetings and slinging ranch dressing for the nameless greyfaced proletariat.

Smoke a cigarette for dinner. A black cup of coffee.

Pull a tarot card. The three of swords. Disappointment.

You could say that again.

Lying in bed after the alarm clock went off in the morning she brutally missed her boyfriend, her ex-boyfriend, the no contact order hanging like an iron veil between them. Not that he wanted to hear from her anyway, the long deep scar on his back probably aching with the thought of her, his head pulsing with his resentment for her. Hot, fat tears down her face. I’m sorry I’m sorry.

Out there loving another woman who would never hurt him. Autumn’s insides churned with despair and she wept, her mouth grimaced open, into her pillow.

Cover her scar-covered arms with a long-sleeved shirt and go to work. Eat a plate of eggs and toast and feel treacherous and hateful. Vomit. Puke spit loser.

A monster who could not love but could only hurt, whose loving was hurting. Desire and despair entangled in a never-ending tango like two snakes wrapped in a loving fucking fighting of a dance.

Draw a card.

The Queen of Pentacles. The widowed woman. The cosmos pointing and laughing.

Arthur coming and visiting her at work, his hard-lined face somehow a charming mask over his subtle interior. The attractive crookedness of his teeth, lateral incisor tucked, shy, behind its neighbor. He was handsome, but emaciated. She recognized the look, the highly medicated aesthetic of the schizophrenic, the manic-depressive, the psychotic. Whatever he was, he was cut from the same cloth as she, different corners of the same bruised and dirty rag.

His soft voice saying, “I’ve never done this before.”

Never had a kiss before? That was a new one. She’d slept with virgins before, but never kissed a man who’d never been kissed. He was awkward but inoffensive and seemed as benign as a boy, maybe moreso. Boys still wolf whistled and hey baby’d and grabbed their little dicks through the jeans their mamas bought them on the train. Arthur could barely hold her hand. There was something pleasant about his shyness, about the way he hid behind himself, poking his head around the corners of his own defenses to look at her. She’d seen a little of him now, that cackling, compulsive part that waited like a shadow behind the man he thought he was. And something else, something dark that slithered behind him, waiting until he held still to coil up his leg.

A card.

The High Priestess.

That would do.

She had kissed him again after his laughing spell and he was surprisingly alright for someone who had allegedly never been kissed before. Didn’t try to tongue her, wasn’t sloppy about it. She could feel him shaking slightly and was endeared by it, how much he cared about that connection that he would even think to be nervous about it. He tasted like cigarettes and cherry pie. She’d reached up and gently touched his face, her fingers brushing into his long hair, and he had at first tensed, almost like he thought she was going to hurt him, then melted against her touch. Everything about this man said pain. She spoke the language fluently.

Arthur had stayed a bit longer and they’d looked over her records, most of which he didn’t recognize except for the Donna Summer and the BeeGees, Robbie the cat making a slinking sign of infinity between their legs, before telling her he had to leave to get back to his mother one floor down. It truthfully gave her a strange jagged feeling that a man of his age, she couldn’t tell exactly how old he was, was living in the same apartment as his mother, but in light of her own questionable background she pushed the feeling aside. It was probably better than being alone all the time, anyway.

Autumn sat on her bed and opened her journal. It was marred with violent scratches of pen, pages crinkled or torn out altogether with the force of her cries for help, smears of dark blood that stiffened the paper like a snotty tissue. She thought about the pleasantness of Arthur’s kiss, the way he delicately fished for her pinkie finger in the air between them with his own while turning over her records. His laugh, both of them.

She drew a card.

The nine of cups.

Now we’re talking.


	7. 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greetings again. I hope you're all enjoying the relationship between Arthur and Autumn. I'm having a wonderful time imagining and writing their lives together. Due to the fact that this work is now becoming increasingly erotic, I've changed the rating to E. I hope this doesn't impact anyone's ability to read the fic. Frankly I don't know why they have an M and an E rating when they represent similar things. Anyway! I hope this chapter is satisfying for you. Remember to leave me a kudos and a comment since they encourage me in my exploration of this strange couple I've found. Cheers. xx

Arthur did not tell his counselor about the suicide attempt and he did not get his pills refilled. At night he wrote continuously in his journal, sometimes entries on his observations and emotions, sometimes jokes, sometimes about Autumn. On April 15th, he wrote,

_I met a girl and I really like her. She said that she likes me back. I feel like_

_I am dreaming. I don’t know what’s real and what’s not and maybe I don’t_

_want to. _

With a little embarrassment, even in the privacy of his journal, he wrote,

_I had never kissed any body before._

Kissing Autumn was a yummy secret, in part because he had nobody to tell, and in part because of how intimate and special it had been. Maybe he could have told his mother. He imagined it and even in his mind he seemed to himself like an eager little boy. No, this was something private and singular, just for him. When Arthur woke up in the mornings he had a new, fresh, and perhaps excited feeling in his chest, his heart perking up like a dog with a scent, latching on to something that he could not yet identify. But after taking his morning medication, five pills of varying sizes in his hand, the emotion died within the hour, going to hibernate in the hollow wintery log somewhere inside him. But now more than ever Arthur knew it was there, living and feeling and waiting.

He went to visit Autumn at work, always getting coffee and a piece of pie. When she was too busy to chat with him, he watched her, pretending to read a newspaper, her thick hair bouncing in the ponytail, the sway of her hips as she walked. She smiled politely at her other guests but smiled sweetly and specifically for him.

Arthur locked himself inside his bathroom and sat on the toilet, opening his journal. Beside the written entries, new pictures had been taped to the inside, women posing themselves invitingly for him. Pinup girls with dark hair and fair skin posing on cars, popping their asses out and giving playful winks in their bikinis. He flipped past a page of knock-knock jokes and opened to a picture of a man knelt between a woman’s legs, his prick inside her, her eyes closed and mouth open in pleasure. Already horny and wanting, Arthur pulled out his cock and stroked himself to the image, imagining it was himself and Autumn. Arthur thought of her naked body, her pert breasts, imagining the color of her pubic hair and the softness of her kiss. He imagined Autumn’s voice, breathy with pleasure, saying his name and telling him to come inside her, his sex throbbing in his hand as he rubbed the sweet spot on himself. Holding back a groan, he came hard onto the picture, his come squirting onto the pages of his journal. The naughtiness of it sent a finishing jolt through him, his hand milking out the last drops of pleasure from his body.

There was a knock on the door.

“Happy,” he mother called through the door, “would you help me get into the bath, dearie?”

She wriggled the handle, the door locked, and Arthur’s heart, which had been slowing back to its normal pace after his shattering orgasm, spiked back into his throat. He snatched a piece of toilet paper off the roll and started frantically began wiping his fluids off the page.

“Uhm, yeah mom,” he replied, trying not to sound panicked. “Just a second.”

When Arthur came out he hoped his face wasn’t red. Thankfully, his mother said nothing.

\---

The next time Arthur visited Autumn’s apartment, he still had smears of white greasepaint on his neck. Over his white buttoned shirt was a beige vest, the ensemble accentuating his hungry figure. His hair was partially slicked back with sweat. Autumn chuckled to herself; she was endearingly reminded of a disco dancer. She greeting him at the door with a kiss. Some dust shook off his soul.

He set a large bag, tan with a floral pattern on it, on the floor near the door.

“What’s in the bag?” she asked.

“My clown stuff.”

“Let me see!”

He pulled out a squishy red clown nose and squeezed it, playfully popping it onto Autumn’s nose.

“So you had a gig today?” she asked as he pulled out a flower pin. He pressed it, a jet of water shooting in her direction, but missed. She stuck her tongue out at him.

He nodded. “At the children’s hospital. The kids there are really great. They always sing along.” He added, “I don’t think they get to go out very often, the doctors are pretty strict. The nurses are a little better, though.”

She took a kitchen towel and wiped at the paint on his neck. “You have clown on you,” she said. “I’m gonna put on a record, do you have anything you wanna listen to?”

Thinking back to her unfamiliar collection of music, he shrugged as he removed his shoes. “No, not really.”

The record player sat on a stand next to the sofa, the records organized beneath it. She knelt down and started ticking through her collection.

“Bauhaus?”

“What’s that?.”

“X-Ray Spex.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Iggy Pop!”

Laughing now. “I don’t know any of the bands you’re talking about!”

“The fact you don’t know Iggy Pop is a war crime,” she scoffed, continuing to flip through. She found a contender and exclaimed, “The Talking Heads! You have to know The Talking Heads or I will strangle you.”

Arthur did, and Autumn took the record out of the bright red paper sleeve. The record crackled under the initial touch of the needle before a spirited instrumental section came swaggering in. The song itself was unfamiliar but enjoyable, the kind of groovy gig Arthur was into.

Autumn clasped her fingers between his, stepping in close to him.

“Dance with me,” she said, her expression dreamy and romantic.

He was more than happy to.

The two of them swayed together for a moment, Autumn taking longer than him to catch the rhythm, before Arthur took the lead and stepped into the dance, guiding her through the oscillating motions of a simple waltz. She surrendered to his lead, pinning their hips together and melting into the fluidity of his touch. There was no hesitation or uncertainty in his movements, the finesse and control of his feet, the hand on the small of her back, kindling a surprising love in the depths of her belly.

Arthur gave her a sneaky peck on her cheek then spun her, her black skirt rising from her ankles like the tentacles of a sea creature. Arthur could see her sweet smile, the batting of her dark lashes on her white cheeks, as she turned round and round. He pulled her back in to a tight embrace, her waist feeling small and slender under his grasp.

“Oh, you really can dance!” she exclaimed, her face aglow with amusement.

“I love dancing,” he said. “I can sing, too.”

Autumn held her body against his, enjoying the press of Arthur’s hips. Arthur thought he saw her blushing.

“You’re so talented, Arthur,” she swooned, not bothering to hide the infatuation in her voice. He smiled against her hair, rocking softly back and forth. In the background, David Byrne whined amorously.

She made them a pot of coffee and sat close to him on her dark brown sofa, stealing a few kisses on his sharp cheek bone. Arthur felt fragile to her somehow, as if she could tear through him like tissue if she touched him too hard. Arthur himself felt sort of fragile, as if Autumn could pass right through him. Arthur the cotton candy cloud.

The record player on the stand beside them had gone silent, the large disc spinning round and round silently on the needle. Autumn set down her coffee and crawled over Arthur’s lap, leaning over the arm of the sofa, to flip it over. The pressure of her body strewn over him was more than welcome, tantalizing even, and the he stole a look at her figure. Her long skirt fell attractively into the cleft of her backside, her maroon socks hugging in to the flesh of her thighs.

“Are you looking at my butt?” she teased, the music starting up again. She turned it down a hair.

Arthur opened his mouth to deny it but instead sheepishly admitted, “Erm…yeah.”

“Don’t be embarrassed, I want you to.”

“You do?”

“I like you. I want you to like me back.”

“I do like you back.”

She giggled, naughty. “Then grab my ass.”

The fabric of her skirt was surprisingly thin and he could feel the outline of her panties through it. The curve of her backside fit perfectly in his hand, jiggling pleasantly as he gently shook it. As he groped at the plump flesh, he found himself chuckling a little out of nervousness, and possibly enjoyment.

“Is that a real laugh or a nervous laugh?” she asked, her expression sweet and mischievous all at once.

“I don’t know,” he said, a little breathy. With his thumb he pulled down the waistband of the skirt enough to steal a look at her underwear. It was maroon, and lacy. Arthur’s groin was hot and throbbing in his trousers. He swallowed heavily, feeling himself starting to blush with both desire and slight embarrassment. With how she was laying on him, there was no way she couldn’t feel how much he wanted her.

Autumn wriggled her hips playfully at him, kittenlike. “I like the way you touch me, Arthur. You’re a good boyfriend.”

He never thought he’d hear that word used to describe him. That breezy, lovey word that meant you were somebody to somebody and now he was. It was sexy when she said it. Boyfriend.

His hand traveled up her thigh, pushing her skirt up her backside and revealing her pert ass in the dark lacy underwear that matched her high socks. Arthur’s tongue suddenly felt dry and spongy in his mouth, his blood rushing loudly in his ears. Autumn tilted her hips up at his touch and made a little _mmm_ sound, Arthur’s erection a rock in his trousers. He must have made a breathy sound because she said,

“You can pull them down if you want.”

If he wasn’t mistaken there was desire in her voice as well.

With both hands, fingers delicately pinching the fabric around her hips as if it was fragile, he pulled her panties down the curve of her ass, the flesh snow white and smooth as marble. She reminded him of the centerfold torn out in his notebook, but better. Pressing the pillows of her ass together, he could see the coy flash of her sex, the teasing seam of her pussy, and with a bit of daring made a circle around her entrance with the pad of his thumb. Autumn made a quiet sound of desire.

“Tell me that you want me,” she said.

His thumb was slick with her wetness. “I want you.”

In moments she was letting her skirt and panties fall to the ground, working to unbutton her lover’s shirt, his vest, the fabric spilling off and around his thin shoulders. Arthur opened his belt and released his erection from his trousers, groping it through the fabric of his underwear before letting it pop into the open air. His pubic hair was brown, slightly lighter than the hair on his head, and not unpleasantly course against Autumn’s skin as she sat on his lap, his prick standing hard between them. Arthur’s hands traced her silhouette, pulling her black sweater over her head, her breasts perky and naked on her chest. Autumn was wearing nothing but her maroon socks now, her mane of black hair caressing her shoulders and the width of her chest. With her thumb she tenderly brushed against his lips, her eyes soft with adoration.

It was then that Arthur noticed that all along her arms were dozens of scars, some very short and close together, a few large and dark across the flesh of her inner wrist. Her left arm was significantly more marked with faded cuts going all the way up to near her shoulder, and without realizing it Arthur had paused to stare at them.

She reached under his chin and with her index and middle fingers tilted his gaze upwards, looking at her. “Don’t worry about that now,” she breathed, taking his hands into her own and sliding them up the length of her torso. Arthur cupped his hands around her small but pert breasts, running his thumbs in little circles around her pink nipples. They stood hard under his touch and he gently pinched at them with his thumb and forefingers. Autumn’s mouth, juicy as a cherry, came open in response to his touch, and the fact that she was enjoying him only made him burn hotter.

Between them, Arthur’s cock pulsed against his belly, dark and engorged with love for her. Autumn wrapped her soft hand around the head and rubbed at it, smearing her palm with his fluids and making a groan of desire come from his throat.

“I want you,” she sighed.

He wanted her more than anything.

Autumn braced herself on Arthur’s shoulders as she lifted herself up. His prick was standing up, red and hard and ready for her. She tilted her hips towards him, her pussy, slick and wet, coming into contact with him, sliding up and down his length, the hardness of him rubbing pleasurably against her clitoris. Arthur made an involuntary sound of enjoyment, his voice a weak and breathy moan in the hot air between them. She was biting down on her bottom lip, her mouth turned up in a naughty smirk, rubbing her soft flesh against him, teasing him, getting a taste of him before she took him. He was practically frothing at the mouth to be inside her.

Autumn lined herself up with his body, the head of his cock prepared at the glistening wet entrance to her body. “Are you ready?” she whispered to him.

“Yes,” he panted.

Slowly, she eased her hips down, pushing past the slight resistance at her entrance, until he was inside her. Immediately Arthur was enveloped by warmth and softness, slipping into her until she was sitting on his lap, her arms around his neck, kissing him with her open mouth. He moaned into their kiss, his hands cupping her face as she circled her fingers in his dark hair. Autumn circled her hips on his lap, his prick pulsing inside her, and Arthur could not help but whimper at the intensity of the sensation.

“You’re inside me,” she whispered in his ear, almost as high as he was.

All he could manage was a breathy, _“Oh my god.” _

Autumn lifted her hips and began to slowly stroke up and down his length. Her pussy was slick with her want of him, her interior muscles squeezing tight around him as she rode his body. As she lowered back down, Arthur thrust upwards to meet her motion, the friction delicious and intoxicating.

The head of his cock was already thick to bursting inside her, his body seeming to fill her up completely. She was totally full of him, moving on him, wet and hard and soft all together on his lap. He placed his hands on her hips and watched as his length, slick and shiny with her juices, moved in and out of her, mouth falling open in the delectable agony of his pleasure.

She began to bounce on him, more quickly this time, and with another upward thrust and a weak moan, Arthur came hopelessly inside her.

For a few moments, Arthur spilled himself into her, pulsing hard inside her tight, inviting body, then slumped back against the couch, drained. He caught his breath, head still spinning. She watched the rise and fall of his boney chest lovingly.

“I’m sorry,” he panted weakly. His piercing blue eyes were rolled to the side, his eyelids fluttering. The yellow light from the living room gleamed off the sweat on his exposed chest.

“You have nothing to be sorry about.”

“You didn’t…?”

“No,” she said. “But next time I will.”

Autumn gently kissed his lips and it felt almost as good as the orgasm. Almost.

They cleaned up with a towel and sat on the couch under a blanket, sharing a cigarette. Autumn didn’t usually allow people to smoke in her apartment, but for Arthur she’d make an exception, this time.

“So you’re not a virgin anymore,” she noted, taking a drag and passing it back to him. “You’re not gonna run away and never call me again, are you?”

He squeezed her to him playfully. His entire body was warm. Everything seemed to have changed somehow. The atmosphere was pink and lovely.

“Tell me a joke, Arthur.”

“Alright. I think I’m colorblind.”

“Huh? Really?”

“Yeah. The news came right out of the green.”

Autumn broke out into a giggle and Arthur smiled along with her. She said, “You’re hilarious, you should be a comedian.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” she said, taking the cigarette back from him, “you could do standup or something.”

“Huh,” he mused aloud. Arthur tried to imagine it, standing in the spotlight and telling jokes while everybody laughed at how funny he was, clapping for him. The fantasy was exciting. Everything felt very possible and open for him.

They put the cigarette out in a shiny-clean ashtray next to the record player. The two of them rested beside each other for a while until Arthur realized that Autumn had fallen asleep on his shoulder. He twisted a lock of her hair around his finger. He couldn’t fall asleep. He didn’t want to.


	8. 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again. I hope you all like this chapter now that the plot is beginning to thicken. Thank you for your patience around the holidays when I have less time to write. Please let me know what you think of this story in the comments. Cheers.

It’s 7pm and Arthur is starting to feel again. Excited insects in the walls of his intestines are waking up and building homes, going on errands. A painful anxiety started in his groin and grew upwards into his lungs. Arthur plucked nervously at the hair on his temple.

After dinner he and his mother engage in their favorite nightly routine, watching television together while she knits and Arthur chain smokes. His medication sat untouched on the kitchen counter. In the darkness of the living room their favorite talk show host cracked a joke with a beautiful celebrity guest and Arthur laughed, genuinely, and so did his mom.

Waves of sorrow that rise up from his gut and rush past his teeth. Long black lashes dewdropped with tears. Black vomit.

He gave in and poured two round blue pills into his hand. Swallowed them. Was swallowed up. Nothing.

Therapy skills. Identify your feelings. I feel sad. I feel scared. I feel enraged. I feel nothing I feel absolutely nothing because you will not let me.

He thought about Autumn. He thought about the subtle bounce of her breasts in his face and the squeeze of her thighs around him and he thought about coming wonderfully and terribly inside her. A little pang of embarrassment churned inside him when he remembered how quickly he’d finished and how she hadn’t, but he thought of Autumn saying _I will next time _and for just a second there was a flare of excitement that there would be a next time.

A big blind fish swimming around inside him lured in the feelings with a light and ate them. Nothing.

It’s 4am and Arthur cannot feel anything. Shirtless in the bathroom, his trousers loose around the jutting angles of his hips, resting his arms on the sink with a rocking back and forth, laughing. Laughing laughing. Cackling when he wants to cry, the cigarette burn on his wrist a stinging circle of welcome pain. The bones of his shoulder blades jutting like stones out of his emaciated back, belly tight and hollow, snorting snot back into his nose.

I feel hopeless. I feel empty. I feel nothing I feel nothing I feel nothing.

Arthur pressed his head against the mirror, rocking it back and forth on the glass and pressing down until he heard it creak. He imagined shattering it with his face, picking up a broken piece as big and long as a prehistoric tooth and sending it deep into his neck. He laughed.

\---

Arthur knocked on Autumn’s apartment door. For a second he almost expected that she would have stopped liking him between the time he last saw her and now. It was a noticeable relief when she answered the door and smiled at him.

“Hey, Arthur! I’m happy to see you, it’s my day off.”

“I know, I went down to the diner and you weren’t there.”

“I’m just hanging out in my room, wanna join me?”

“Sure.”

Arthur had never been in a woman’s bedroom before. There was something very off-limits and almost taboo about being in a woman’s room to him, like he was witnessing something esoteric and forbidden. Even though she seemed happy to see him, an imminent feeling of rejection loomed over him like a shadow. He sighed, and a wave of sleepy sadness came out through his mouth.

Several colored pencils were strewn about the floor beside a small leather journal which was open to several casual illustrations. A bag of art supplies as well as a spread of tarot cards made a semicircle around the space where Autumn had been working. The room smelled like incense. Robbie the cat sat on the windowsill, tail swishing to some imaginary rhythm.

“Sorry for the mess,” she apologized, picking up an empty coffee cup from the floor and putting it on top of her dresser beside a potted plant with long hanging tendrils of ivy.

The room was cozy and comfortable even though Arthur felt like a stranger in it. She picked up her art supplies as he looked around. “What is that?” he asked.

Beside her nightstand was some kind of small altar adorned with candles and red flowers. On the back left corner was a ceramic sculpture of a goat, his front hooves reared upwards like a wild horse; on the right was a nude woman baring a large pitcher of water which spilled elegantly over her slender shoulders. Before both of them were goblets engraved with the sun and the moon. A bowl of flowers and stones and something else Arthur couldn’t identify, something white, was displayed in the center.

“Oh,” Autumn said, approaching the piece with her collected tarot cards, placing them back on top of it, “this is just a little altar I made, I use it for meditating, writing, giving thanks, that sort of thing.”

It was morbid but beautiful, and Arthur got the feeling he was being made privy to something intensely private. “What are those?” he asked, pointing to the objects in the bowl.

“Those are animal bones.” She must have sensed his pending inquiry because she chuckled and said, “I know what you’re thinking! No, I didn’t kill any animals for occult purposes. I bought these from a specialist. They were already dead when he found them.” She picked up a small thin one and Arthur could see clear now that it was a bone, maybe a rib from something furry.

“Are you, an, uhm…” For a second he struggled to get it out. “...like a devil-worshipper, or something?”

She laughed. “The devil! I don’t believe in the devil. Do you?”

He shook his head, but really he wasn’t totally sure. Probably not. But maybe.

Kneeling down beside the altar, Autumn picked up a long-stemmed rose that bordered the altar, her thumb caressing a dark thorn. She beckoned him to join her and he did.

“No,” she went on, “I don’t believe in the devil. I believe in myself, though. And I believe that the world is a material thing with something immaterial underneath it. A little something and a great big nothing. Pretty interesting, eh?”

Arthur felt a little dense trying to grasp it, but he was getting there. “I think I understand what you’re saying.”

“I know it’s a little convoluted. But I just think there’s something significant about the fact we exist and we can experience the world, and that we know we’re experiencing it! So many creatures are just going along and they don’t even know they’re going along, but we do. And it causes us all sorts of pain and pleasure, doesn’t it?”

He nodded. It really did. “What’s the bowl for?”

Autumn put the rose back on the altar. She picked up the bowl and held it in her palms for him to see. “Offerings. I give them to myself, to get to know myself better. If I like them, I keep them. If I don’t, I get rid of them. I sometimes redecorate the whole altar depending on how I’m feeling. I recently put all these roses here because they’re my favorite flower and I feel like they symbolize something profound. Don’t ask me what it is because I don’t know yet, all I know is that I love them and they’re important to me.”

She laughed as if catching herself. “I’m pontificating, I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s interesting,” he replied. “I’ve never been very religious.”

“Religious…” she repeated, her voice slow. On the altar was a slim, black dagger. Autumn drew her fingers over it thoughtfully. She put the bowl back, her hands resting on her knees. “I guess you could say that about me. Wanna cuddle on the bed?”

Of course he did. His soul salivated. His whole body was begging, touch me touch me.

Autumn fit in to the space against his hollow chest perfectly. She curled up against him and Arthur was reminded of a little animal in a tree somewhere, taking shelter in him. When Arthur felt the warm air of her breath against his neck a painfully sentimental sensation flourished in the pit of his hollow stomach, a sort of weeping for joy and a mourning for the fact that he had never experienced such an intimate touch before.

He thoughtfully traced the lines of her hand, the veins and the tendons, with a slender finger, silently and tactilely investigating her. She played along, turning her hand over and letting him touch her palm, the pads of her fingers, her wrist. Her hand was so small and pale it made him think of a porcelain doll, with all the fragility that came with it. For a moment he worried that he could break her under even the softness of his touch, fractures forming like spiderwebs in the perfection of her skin.

When Arthur’s curious finger reached her wrist, he encountered the firm plastic sensation of a bandage, the subtle looseness of it against her skin, and made a small circle around it. With a glance he could see under her long sleeve that it was horizontal against her wrist and the color of her flesh. He expected her to withdraw her arm but she didn’t.

In spite of his vague nervousness, he asked her, “Why do you cut yourself?”

Her voice was pillow soft. “Because it feels good.”

He kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelled good; clean and feminine.

“I hit my head against things sometimes,” he offered.

Twirling their fingers together. “Does it help?”

Arthur shrugged. “Sort of. Nothing really helps.”

Autumn exhaled a sound that may have been a laugh. She kissed their fingers. Whatever membrane was keeping his emotions from surfacing was threatening to rupture. He could feel that something was trying to crawl its way out of his throat. Autumn tilted her gaze upwards and brushed her lips against his jawline. The feeling buzzed like electricity. Arthur met her touch and pressed his lips to hers.

As he kissed her, he brushed his thumb over the blue vein in her wrist and felt the pump of her heart on the pad, echoing the pulse of his own heart. Blood rushed through the both of them. Even the inner churnings of his abdomen had become a soothing internal rhythm. Arthur felt acutely that he was in his own body, the stark and surreal reality of realizing he was alive, possessed with himself.

She smiled into the kiss. “You smell like cigarettes,” she giggled, kissing his chin. The sensation of her lips moving against his made Arthur’s heart rate increase a tick. She kissed him again, her hand squeezing his. Sensation whirled around him.

Autumn was wrapping around him, serpentine, her curious mouth tasting his neck and collarbone. He made a breathy sound as he traced the soft curve of her arm with his fingers, her breasts supple and inviting to his eager but nervous touch. He cupped his hand around her chest, listened for her approving sound of enjoyment, and massaged his touched into her. Braless, Arthur could feel the perk of her nipple under his thumb, that sensitive button becoming firm for him. Autumn sighed in satisfaction, her naughty fingers beginning to unbutton the top of his shirt, opening his sweater and exposing the cool, pale chest underneath.

Arthur’s knee was driven up between Autumn’s legs, and he could feel the downward press of her pelvis against his femur. He kissed into the crook of her neck tasting the sweat that was beginning to bead there, and Autumn mewled hopelessly, her hips rolling against him. Her hands were in his hair, on his back, and Arthur’s eyes rolled with how much she wanted him. His hands found the supple flesh of her ass and pushed her deeper into the grind, wanting her to want him, to please herself with him. Grinding herself on him, loving herself with him, Autumn was a mess of whispered moans and it was all because of him.

Arthur’s mouth moved from her neck to her collarbone to her nipple, closing around the flesh through her shirt. She arched into him, hands moving into his dark hair, her head falling back as his tongue made flicking circles around her nipple. Hungry and thirsty and starving for her, Arthur’s hands slid up the line of her silhouette, taking her shirt with them up and over her breasts, cupping them in his hands, rolling her nipples under his thumbs as his mouth kissed imprecise and amorous lines between them.

“I want you to taste me,” Autumn breathed.

I want to fuck you, he thought, obscene and drooling with want in his head. I want to fuck you so bad.

Arthur kissed the hard lines of her ribcage, the skin of her belly pulling firm against the bones, her stomach a shallow valley beneath the pillows of her naked chest. Her skirt slid over the slender width of her hips, her thighs, Arthur’s nose buried in her emerald underwear. He kissed her through the fabric, her pubic hair a small bushel of padding under her panties, inhaling the scent of her body, tasting it. Teasingly, he rubbed at her with the pad of his finger, the tip of his tongue following behind, and Autumn mewled quietly.

He reached down and touched himself through his trousers, his prick as hard and thick as a stone through the fabric. His hips rocked gently as he finally pulled her panties down her legs, kissing her thighs as he finally took a look at her flowerlike sex up close. For a few moments he fondled his excitement with one hand, leaving little pecks on her legs and mound as he lost himself in his enjoyment. 

“Pull your cock out,” Autumn allowed him, imperious even through the wavering of he voice. He gratefully obliged, undoing his belt and pants and allowing his throbbing prick to pop free through the opening in his trousers. Now free against the sheets, Arthur rocked his hips lustfully as he kissed her, opening his mouth and lapping his flattened tongue against her. She was already dripping wet for him, desiring him so fully that she could no longer hide it, her body displaying her want of him. He took her in completely, sucking at the soft folds of her sex, tongue making a hungry circle around her opening as she sighed desperately for him.

Arthur licked at the dewy slit, his hips rolling against the mattress, getting his pleasure as she got hers. His tongue lapped hungrily against her cunt, sucking up the sweetness of her juices as she trembled against him, her thighs closing around his ears. She was as juicy as a peach, his whole mouth slick with her, his tongue prodding inside the firm walls of her pussy to taste her more completely. Arthur moaned against her as he ate, humping shamelessly against the bed, the vibrations of his voice sending waves of sensation into Autumn’s pelvis.

His mouth closed around the engorged bud, sucking gently and wetly on her. Autumn lifted her hips towards his mouth in ecstasy, fingers caught in the waves of his hair.

Lewdly, shamelessly, she moaned, _“Fuck, Arthur.”_

The sound of his name was enough to send a jolt of pleasure into his groin and he groaned against her. For a moment he thought he was going to spill over onto the mattress, his cock slick with his own desire, but caught his breath and held back his need. Autumn’s belly was quivering, her hips lifting up to meet him, the grip on his hair becoming more intense.

“_Oh my god, Arthur,” _she mewled into the air, _“I’m gonna come, you’re gonna make me come.” _

Arthur was delirious with lust. He flicked his tongue rapidly over her clitoris, his greedy index finger pushing into her body as he sucked and licked on her. Autumn bounced her hips, fucking herself on his hand as she reached her threshold.

Her whining grew to an ever increasing height, her voice a wiry mewl, and Autumn was coming hard onto his hand and into his mouth. Arthur could not help but moan in ecstasy, coaxing out her orgasm with his tongue and finger, licking up the juices of her desire as they came gushing out of her.

When the stimulation became too much, she gently pushed his head away, beckoning him to come up for air. Immediately her mouth was on his, tasting him, tasting her pussy, sucking his naughty finger clean of herself, Arthur’s prick a hard and delicious imposition between them.

In moments, he was on his back and she was touching him, making a similar trail of kisses down the landscape of his body.

“Tell me before you come,” she told him, the movement of her lips on him sending spikes of wanting into his belly. He may have given a word of affirmation, but he wasn’t sure. Autumn’s tongue flicked fiendishly out of her mouth and onto his cock and Arthur wanted to die.

Arthur was already so close he didn’t know how long he was going to last. Autumn kissed at the head of his cock, her mouth still wet from their kiss, parting her lips and teasing him with her wet tongue. His hands blindly found the tangle of her hair, gripping her tightly in anticipation. She hollowed her cheeks, sucking on the head of his prick, her fist stroking at the base of his cock, slicking him with her saliva.

Autumn came back up and spit onto him, twisting her fist up and down his hard prick with her hand before taking him into her throat. His skin was shiny with sweat, his vision blurred and useless from pleasure. Instinctively, he pushed down on the top of her head, wanting her to devour all of him.

She pulled her mouth of his prick with a subtle _pop. _Her eyes were steely.

“If you push my head down again, I’m going to tie those naughty hands up. Do you understand?”

He nodded, breathless.

Autumn parted her lips on the head of his cock, her mouth strawberry juicy, tongue flat and lapping slow against him. The muscles of Arthur’s belly tightened and quivered, his hands curling reflexively on the bed sheets. When she took him again he sighed amorously. The contact was so good it almost hurt.

She took the head into her mouth and swirled her tongue around it, the flesh swollen and firm against her touch. Down the length, tasting all of him, inhaling the smell of his pubic hair, the taste of his sweat. The pleasure was like a razor to Arthur’s touch-starved senses, his brain splitting down the middle at the sensation.

“I’m going to come,” he whined.

Autumn moaned onto his prick, her pace becoming deliciously slow. Her lips rolled over the head, tongue flicking at his leaking slit, tasting him inside and out. Arthur’s hips twitched, his arms trembling from desire to touch her, to make her touch him. He thought he felt her smile.

His orgasm was a thorn of pleasure in his groin, threatening to tear through him. Insane with desire, he let out a weak sound of love and despair as he came. Autumn’s hungry throat swallowed all of it, her hand twisting and milking him of his orgasm. Arthur melted into the sensation, his body dissolving into the rolling waves of his pleasure.

He felt her lips on his and was barely cognizant enough to kiss her back. He could taste himself on her, the musty personal flavor of his own body, both of them mixing together in their kiss.

“How was that?” she asked him. It was sincere, with just a little self-satisfaction to it.

All he could do was nod.

\---

That night, Arthur wrote in his journal:

_i think some thing is happening to me. but i don’t know what it is yet._

He slept for two hours and woke up, thinking of her immediately. Insects buzzed in his belly. He did not attempt to quiet them.

\---

The phone rang three times before Autumn answered it.

“Hello, is this Miss Reed?”

“It might be. Why?” She locked the phone between her ear and her shoulder and went back to washing dishes. The water sloshed warm and sudsy against her wrists.

“I’m calling from the pharmacy on West Maple drive, I wanted to know if you wanted us to refill your prescription.”

“Nah, that’s alright. I’m good.” Autumn picked up a kitchen knife out of the grey water and looked at her reflection in it.

The pharmacist’s tone shifted slightly. “It’s for your Lithium.”

“I know.”

“Are you getting it from another pharmacy?”

“Not that I know of.”

There was a troubled pause on the other end of the phone. Then a sudden sense of urgency. “So you have enough left to last you the next month?”

She made a thoughtful face and saw it in the reflection of the knife. “You know, I think I better be going.”

“Miss Reed, I must advise you not to stop taking your medication without consult—”

When Autumn hung up the phone, the knife was still in her hand.


	9. 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again. Thank you for your patience while I write this chapter. It's an extra long, delicious one just for you all. I hope you are all okay with the direction in which this is going. I shamelessly love Arthur and enjoy seeing him in these situations. Hope you all do as well. Enjoy!

In the morning, the bus to Autumn’s probation office was frigid cold. Despite the emerging springtime, there was a fuzzy layer of frost over the landscape. Fool’s spring. She wished she had a scarf on.

“Good morning, Miss Reed,” said the testing agent, a tall, thin woman with long, frizzy hair. Her tone was pleasant, but annoying. Autumn grunted in response.

Blow into a machine. It beeps. Point-Zero-Zero. You’re dry.

Sit on the toilet. Let a stranger watch piss come out of your body. Have so little dignity left it hardly matters anymore. Clean. Free to go.

“See you next week,” Autumn muttered.

Her probation officer was a young, bald-headed man in a blue polo. His affect was flat but he seemed to like her. His name was Matt. Behind him on the wall were his diplomas, his college degree, his certifications, and also a rack of different color ties that Autumn had never seen him wear, not even once.

“So, how’s everything? Everything going alright with your drug testing?” he asked, opening her file and peering through it.

“Yup,” she answered, trying to conceal the irritated resentment in her voice. “Still clean, as always.”

“Any run-ins with the cops? New problems?”

“Nope.” Outside somewhere a male was arguing angrily with his probation officer. The entire office smelled like cigarettes and paperwork. “If I can ask, how much longer do I have to do this drug testing thing for? I’ve been clean the entire time.”

Matt replied, “Well, you’ve only been on it for two months, so it might be a little early to let you off now.” Candidly, he added, “You also were totally wasted when you were arrested, .18 blood alcohol content.”

A pang of embarrassment twisted inside her. “That’s not drugs, though.”

“They’re related. I’ll probably keep you on for a few months longer and then we can talk about reducing it, it’ll take a while before I can take you off of it completely.”

A snarling dog struggled against its chains in her gut, frothed against its muzzle, but lied down in submission. She suddenly wanted a cigarette. “Alright.”

Sympathetically, he offered, “I know it’s disappointing. But you’re doing really well. Just keep doing the dog and pony show and you’ll be off this soon enough. Some people are constantly tempting fate and I have to see them here for the rest of their lives, or until they’re in prison. If you play this right, I’ll have you off mandatory reporting within the year and you’ll never see me again as long as you live. Got it?”

She softened a little. “Sure. You’re right. See you next month, then?”

“See you next month.”

The restaurant was empty except for one server and one line cook when Autumn got there. Candy, a pretty waitress with curly red hair, was polishing silverware half-heartedly and throwing it into a plastic bin.

“You’re here early,” she observed, her voice feminine and flirty even with Autumn. Candy’s figure was full and attractive in her uniform.

She replied, “Probation meeting. Has it been dead all morning?”

“There was a bit of a pop in the wee hours, you know, all the after-hours hungover crew, but nothing since then. I’m about to get off.”

“Lucky. I’m here all day. Gag. You got any coke?”

“Aren’t you drug testing?” she asked, hands working on the silverware.

“I tested today, I won’t have to do it again for another week. I could get away with it.”

“Why risk it? I don’t have any, anyway. But…” A pause, the fork making a metal sound as it joined the others in the bin. “…I do have some ketamine.”

Autumn’s ears perked up. There was a slight hungry tone in her voice. “You do?”

Candy _mhm_’d. “You’re doing a five panel, right? They don’t test for it, and it’s good shit, too. I’ll give it to you for forty.”

A bit of a cringe inside. “Forty? Yeesh.”

Candy shrugged. “Hey, it is what it is. You want it?”

“Yeah, I do.”

Back at her apartment, Autumn used a rolling pin to gently crush the powder inside the bag into a fine dust before dumping a small pile out onto the back of a book. She chopped it into a line with her debit card and with a pair of scissors cut off about three inches of an old McDonald’s straw, blew out the droplets of Diet Coke still waiting there, and lowered her face to the white line.

She inhaled.

In thirty seconds, Autumn melted.

\---

A long brush stroke. The left side of his face was white. Brush. His mouth the color of chalk. A swipe with red. A big exaggerated grin over his natural lips. Stick out his tongue. The half-painted clown in the mirror did the same.

Behind him, the other performers chattered amongst themselves over a card game as Arthur began to draw on two blue triangles above and below his eyes, a painted clown mask over his own face. In the harsh lights above the mirror, dark shadows splayed over his thin body, his collarbones jutting, spine reptilian. The greasepaint filled in the harsh lines around his mouth, his blue eyes piercing through the mask and making him appear younger, almost boyish. Another clown sat at a mirror to his left, pulling on a frizzy red wig.

“God, this weekend couldn’t come fast enough,” sighed one of the men, his arms resting around the back of his chair. He threw a card down, but it was worth almost nothing.

Another replied, “Says you, I got a gig tomorrow, and Sunday.”

A third, “Are you two complaining? I’m flat broke and all I got is today.”

Two more cards down. “That’s ‘cause you’re lazy as shit, Randall, and you don’t pick up gigs.”

“Fuck you, Don, I value my free time.” He called over the game, “What about you, Artie? You workin’ the weekend?”

“Just today,” he replied, glad to be included in the conversation. Confidently, he added, “I’m going to see my girlfriend tomorrow.”

There was a beat, then a round of incredulous laughter.

“_You_ have a girlfriend?”

“Yeah right!”

“I coulda sworn you were a faggot,” another chimed in. There were speckled sounds of agreement.

Another offered, “He’s not queer, he’s just a serial killer.”

The clowns all laughed and to Arthur they sounded like a pen full of hogs. He continued filling in the triangle above his eye. “Very funny, guys,” he said.

“How’s Artie got a girlfriend and you don’t?” one teased, elbowing the man next to him and gazing back down at his cards.

“He don’t!” Three cards on the table. The gang groaned as he swept up the chips.

The clown to his left, a big fat man in pinstriped pants, turned to him. “They’re just jealous. I believe ya.”

Arthur couldn’t help but smirk to himself. The clown in the mirror smirked back.

\---

Autumn opened her dresser drawer and withdrew her secret item. She held it up. It was a long, dusty-pink ribbon. “Check it out,” she said. “It’s silk. Feel it, it’s really soft.”

Arthur touched it between his thumb and forefinger. It was beautiful in color and texture, and very soft just like she’d said. Straddling his lap in her black nightie, she looked devilishly beautiful. With the pink ribbon between her fingers, she looked dangerous. An air of mischief emanated from her like a perfume.

“What do you do with that?” he asked.

“I’m gonna tie your hands together.”

Arthur felt himself laugh softly. Autumn was pulling the length of the ribbon through her fingers, feeling the edge sliding through her doll hands.

“Would you like to try? It’s really very comfortable.”

Briefly, Arthur felt a spike of discomfort. He’d seen this kind of thing before in a magazine but never in real life, and never where the man was tied. Often the bindings were very elaborate and there was a pretense of aggressiveness, even violence, which made him pass by those images with disinterest. It wasn’t very sexy. He considered it.

“Does it hurt?”

“I hope not!” she exclaimed. “I hope if I ever was touching you and it hurt you would say something. No, it feels good. The ribbon is so soft and it feels good to be the center of attention, at least for me.”

Arthur thought for a moment, then tentatively answered, “Okay, I’ll try it.”

Autumn carefully placed his wrists together on his lap, touching him with the care of someone working with something extremely fragile**. **The ribbon slid delicately over and around his wrists, brushing gently against his fair skin. Autumn pressed her lips to his and instinctively Arthur’s eyes closed in desire, the sensation of the ribbon sliding over him a pleasant lull in the background of his body. He could feel the mobility of his arms and hands diminishing,

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“No.”

“Can you move your arms?”

He tried. “No.”

“Good,” she chirped. “If you ever want to get out just say so.”

His hands went up over his head and he felt her slide the ribbon through the open space in the headboard.

“You look really cute right now,” she said.

“Really?” he asked, slightly perplexed.

Autumn finished binding his hands to the headboard and unbuttoned his shirt, leaning down to kiss his sternum, her mouth soft on the rigid bones of his chest. “Really.”

Autumn flexed her fingers, the motion reminding Arthur of a cat exposing its claws, and gently drew her nails down his chest. A shiver of pleasure snaked up Arthur’s body, his hips twitching automatically in response. Her tongue, curious and red, poked from her mouth and swiped against his chest, melting into another kiss as she clawed mischievously on his middle. Instinctively, Arthur pulled down on his restraints, wanting to touch her, but was caught by the ribbon that held him with surprising strength. Her bottom lip caught between her teeth, Autumn looked up at him with large, hungry eyes.

“You’re being so good for me,” she praised, her voice velvet soft and just as luxurious. “Are you uncomfortable at all?”

“No.”

A kiss on his tight belly. Her tongue making a naughty circle around his navel, fingers on the band of his trousers. Tongue riding the xylophone of his ribcage. Arthur looked up at the ceiling, his mouth falling open weakly. She palmed the growing erection in his trousers, watching the fabric tent around his stiffness with an almost girlish delight, kissing at it through the fabric.

She asked him, “Do you want me to take your pants off?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

A gentle squeeze on his groin and he moaned quietly. Her voice was imperious. “Ask me nicely.”

“Please take my pants off.”

Autumn made a quiet, erotic noise of enjoyment, practically salivating at his submission to her, opening Arthur’s belt and trousers. Her partner’s erection popped up eagerly through his open zipper, clothed in the maroon of his underwear, his hip bones jutting sharply beneath the fabric. Arthur’s trousers were around his thighs, partially restricting the movement of his legs and adding to his feeling of helplessness. He looked down at her, her face rubbing against his clothed erection, her expression succubus-like in its hunger. Autumn drew her nails down his hips and thighs, the sensation almost as good as her mouth against his needy prick.

Head falling back, he moaned into the air, “Please touch me.”

She mewled, licking at him devilishly through the fabric. “No. Not yet. You’re too delicious.”

The black nightie slipped from her slender shoulders, down her hips like an escaping shadow, revealing her nudity to him. Her nipples were hard, pink candies on her breasts, the triangle of dark hair between her legs inviting to his mouth and fingers. The anticipation was splendid in its agony.

Her thighs squeezing around his waist like a vice, teasingly bouncing on his lap, her bare breasts jiggling invitingly in front of his gaze, her naked pussy grinding against his aching erection. Arthur strained against the ribbon, wanting to cup her beasts in his hands, the binding only increasing his yearning for her. Nails down his chest, red streaks on his white skin. Arthur’s brain short-circuited, sparks bouncing off the inside of his skull.

“Please fuck me,” he whined, the desperation in his voice surprising even himself. “_Oh, god…”_

Autumn’s tongue was in his mouth, silencing his pleas.

“You’re doing such a good job,” she said into his mouth, her voice breathy with love. “I want to put a blindfold on you. Is that okay?”

Encouraged at the praise, Arthur nodded. From the nightstand, a white strip of cloth. It made a circle around his skull, hugging against his temples and knotting behind his head.  
  
Autumn repeated, “If at any point you want me to stop, just say so.”

He didn’t want her to stop. In the darkness of the blindfold, Arthur relaxed against his restraints and welcomed her hands and mouth over the landscape of his body. Her tongue flicked against his nipple unexpectedly and he whimpered, arching up against her touch. There was a hand on his groin, cupping up his testicles through his underwear and squeezing them gently, wantingly. She kissed at the inside of his thighs, carefully avoiding his sex, Arthur’s underwear a torturous imposition between them.

He groaned, not caring how pathetic he sounded. “_Please,” _he begged,_ “Please touch me.” _

Without even looking he could tell she was smiling. “Tell me what you want me to do to you.”

His hips lifted upwards towards her mouth. She evaded him. Under the blindfold his cheeks were pink with both desire and embarrassment. “S-suck on me.”

“Suck on your what?”

“Please suck on my cock.”

As if by magic word, Autumn melted into a moan of delight and crept her fingers into his waistband. His prick, hard and dark with want, leapt up to meet her, and with a weak sound of enjoyment she mouthed at the rock hard organ, saliva thick and wet on her tongue as she lapped at him. Arthur’s eyes rolled behind the blindfold, delirious, the pleasure of her mouth on him searing through him like the whirring of a red hot buzz saw. The sounds of his own panting were loud in his ears, a jarring melody over the rhythm of his heart. His cock sank deep into Autumn’s throat and he turned his face against his bound arm, grasping onto his bindings for support. With his trousers tight against his legs Arthur was constricted into near immobility, at the mercy of the pleasure that his lover was giving him, tortured by the relentlessness of her adoration.

She swirled her tongue around the weeping slit of his cock, tasting him on the inside, sinking down until she met her own closed fist and hollowing her cheeks as she sucked on him remorselessly. Her hand followed the movements of her mouth, stroking him at the same time she was licking on him. Arthur sank into his helplessness, mewling at the sensation of her mouth on him, hips rocking compulsively against the onslaught of sensation.

Hand twisting up and down him, Autumn told him, “I’m gonna make you come all over yourself. Are you gonna make a big mess for me?”

He nodded and whimpered in the affirmative, words lost in the slurring jungle of his moaning. She took him in her mouth once more, enjoying how thick and hard he was for her, tasting his leaking precome. Her hand worked in twisting motions as she jerked him off, placing his throbbing pick between her breasts and bouncing them with each upward stroke up her hand.

Arthur’s moans were rising to a peak. His testicles were high and tight against his body. “I-I’m g…”

Her moans were shameless in their desire. “Come for me, baby. I wanna see you come for me.”

In mere seconds, he was obeying her. Arthur spilled over with a pathetic whimper, shooting onto his belly and chest, her hand. He could feel the warm spray of his come on his abdomen, the fluid pooling in his belly button, Autumn’s fist smearing his seed on her breasts as she worked out the last spurts from his cock. Arthur felt filthy, lewd, and hopelessly, stupidly in love.

Beyond the haze of his orgasm, he could hear Autumn laugh in enjoyment. “You’re so fucking good, Arthur. Oh my god, you’re amazing.” 

When she took the blindfold off him, he was still panting. She kissed him deeply, his arms still bound to the headboard behind him, his heavy brows furrowed in the pulsing afterglow. She laughed and he did, too.

“Did you like that?” she asked, nose gently rubbing against his.

He kissed her again. “Yes.” A bit nervously, he added, “When can we do it again?”

She smiled. So did he.


	10. 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the views, comments, and kudos on this story so far. I'm looking forward to reading what you have to say about this part. If you'd like to, you can follow me on twitter and instagram @aarthurfleckk. I'd love to hear from you all. Hope you enjoy this chapter and the direction this fic is going in general. Cheers! xx

Arthur brushed his teeth and his hair, uncharacteristically not avoiding his own gaze in the mirror. His eyes looked large and boyish on his thin face, his expression soft but masculine under his heavy brows. It almost embarrassed him to think that he enjoyed looking at it. He could already feel that the pills from the night before were starting to wane, the dose from the morning forgotten, and the insects of emotion were burrowing holes into his musculature. Arthur’s heart was pounding, both excited and nervous to see Autumn again, his dates with her becoming synonymous with a physical and emotional intensity that he had never experienced before. A memory of her hands on him, blindfolded, ghosted across his mind and excitement zigzagged its way down his spine. Shame wagged its tongue at him as he realized he was already fighting back an erection. Emotions were waking up inside him, groggy as sleeping giants, his gaunt body creaking under their weight. For a moment, Arthur dug his nails into his palm and waited for his arousal to recede before leaving the bathroom.

In the living room, his mother was planted in her usual spot in her chair, knitting him a blanket. The fabric hung down to the floor, baby blue, covering her small body. Arthur went into the kitchen and looked at her through the opening in the wall as he moistened his dry mouth with a glass of water.

His mother called, “Come sit down and watch I Love Lucy with me, Happy.”

Arthur looked at the clock. It was six PM, right around the time he was due to take his evening medicine. “No thanks, ma, I actually have plans.” He picked up the orange bottle from the kitchen counter, looked at it, then put it back down.

“Where are you going, Happy? You’re so on the go lately.”

For a moment he considered lying to her, but an unusual wind of confidence gusted up through him. A smiled tugged at the corners of his mouth. “Well, I, erm, I’m going to see my girl…girlfriend.”

She blinked, looked up at him. “Girlfriend? _You’re_ seeing somebody?”

“Try not to act so surprised.”

“Happy, that’s wonderful. That’s just lovely.” Her hands went back to work, metal sticks clicking against one another. She added, “_Finally.” _

Embarrassment tickled the inside of his belly and a sheepish chuckle crawled out of him like a spider. Bracing himself with a hand on his chest, he managed to swallow it. “Her—her name is Autumn. She’s really great.” He added, “She actually lives on the floor above us. She’s a waitress over at Dino’s, you know that place on—”

Not looking at him, her attention on the television, his mother replied, “That’s so nice, Happy. Make sure you bring her over for dinner one day.”

Arthur nodded but internally noted that they didn’t own a dining table and rarely cooked. He felt a smile twisting his face into a grimace and, even though no one was looking at him, covered the expression with his hand.

He gave his mother a kiss goodbye and turned towards the door. As soon as his hand touched the handle, his mother spoke up.

“Oh, Happy?” she called to him, this time looking up from her distraction towards the door.

“Yeah, ma?”

“Did you take your evening medicine?”

He swallowed. “Yeah, ma. Thanks.”

She smiled at him and nodded weakly, going back to her knitting. For some reason the lie didn’t hurt nearly as badly as he thought it would.

\---

Robbie meowed at Arthur and put his front paws on Arthur’s trousers as he entered the apartment. Autumn tried to shoo him away but Arthur didn’t mind the pleasant contact of the animal’s toes on his leg. The cat’s head felt small and fragile against his palm, as if he could crush the little skull accidentally. Robbie purred and nuzzled his lip against Arthur’s thumb. The apartment smelled richly of incense and coffee.

“I got you flowers,” Arthur told her.

Autumn’s face lit up. She poured a cup of water in the pot of an enormous, draping plant by the kitchen. “You did? Where are they?”

Quick as a viper, Arthur pulled a magic wand, black with a white tip, from his sleeve and held it out for her. Autumn looked at it quizzically, attempting to politely hold her gracious expression.

“I don’t get it,” she said.

Arthur smirked. He flicked the wand and a bouquet of plastic flowers exploded out of the end. _“Ta da!”_

Autumn laughed and took the prop, inspecting it. “Clever!” she remarked, touching the plastic leaves with her fingertip.

“It’s magic. Get it?”

She chuckled. “Yeah, I think I get it. Do you want a cup of coffee?”

He did.

“When am I gonna get to go over your place?” Autumn asked coyly, her cold hands wrapped around a white mug.

“There’s nothing to do over there,” he admitted, a little abashedly. “Unless you like watching TV with my mom.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Fine. She has her days. Her walking’s not so good. Doc’s got her on these new meds, they make her tired.”

Autumn smirked. “That makes two of us.”

Sipping his coffee, Arthur held up three fingers.

“They got you on a lot of meds?” she asked sympathetically.

“Seven different ones.”

“_Seven? Jee-_sus. Sorry to hear that.”

He shrugged. “It’s alright. I’ve been, erm…” He traced the lip of his cup with his thin index finger. “…I’ve been cutting back on a few of them. Just the ones that make me really tired.” Anxiously, afraid he may have said the wrong thing, he added, “I’m still taking them, though, just not as much.”

A smile shadowed across Autumn’s expression, her eyelashes long and dark against her cheeks. “You don’t have to justify it to me, I get it. I don’t like the medicine they have me on now, either. It’s a very high dose. I don’t know how they expect me to work all the time while also being brain dead. They must really think I’m crazy.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“No, I am. I just…I don’t feel bad about it. I’m not ashamed of it. I like being crazy. Is that crazy?” She laughed, and Arthur’s mouth tugged into a smile.

He answered, “No, I…I never thought about it like that.”

She went on, “I just don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with me. Everyone is so emotionally stunted all the time, it’s like they don’t feel anything, and they don’t want me to feel anything either. People treat each other so badly and we’re not supposed to have any kind of response to it—now that’s just crazy to me. Sometimes it’s right to be angry, or sad, or…enraged even.”

Inside him, hungry ghosts were waking from their slumber, their mouths open and wanting. They crawled over one another, indistinct and shapeless, only just beginning to solidify their misty forms. Autumn seemed so whole and radiant to him, her emotions washing over him like waves on a golden shore, and internally Arthur opened his mouth to drink in whatever salted water she would pour into him.

“I hardly feel anything sometimes,” he admitted. Something was starting to splinter inside him.

“You will,” she assured him. “You will.”

Arthur leaned in to kiss her and she closed the gap between them. Autumn’s thumbs brushed over his knuckles, her small hands holding onto his boney fingers as their lips brushed up against one another’s. They both tasted like coffee.

In her bedroom, someone had poured gasoline around their feet and lit a match. Their coffee sat forgotten on the kitchen table as the two wrapped around each other like snakes, Autumn’s back pressed against her bedroom wall, Arthur decidedly all over her with his mouth. He pressed his knee up into her groin, pulling her into the grind by her slender hips, his hands sliding up to cup her breasts through her top.

Autumn twisted under his grasp until she faced the wall, her ass pressing hard up against his groin, her head tilted back against his kiss. He brushed her long hair out of the way, her the pale length of her neck exposed as if to vampire bite, and he kissed into it, his hand on her hips pulling her against him.

“I really liked tying you up last time. Can we do that again?” she asked. He nodded eagerly between kisses, the memory sending a jolt of excitement into his groin. Arthur ground his hardening prick against the cleft of her ass, wanting her to feel his hunger through the thin fabric of her skirt, her panties.

Autumn smirked, hands pressing against the wall. “Tell me,” she ordered.

Arthur was getting good at this. “Please tie me up.”

She moaned into the air and Arthur could sense the desire destabilizing her tone, her voice wavering with the power of her longing. It was as if he had found some thin but powerful thread around her heart and was tugging on it. She wanted him and he loved it. He pulled again,

“I want you to tie me up until I can’t move. Blindfold me and…c-control me.”

That seemed to do it. Autumn seemed to sprout claws, turning around to pull his sweater up over his head and bringing his naked chest up against her, her nails threatening to make lines of red pain down his naked back. Her tongue tasted the flesh of his neck, that iron-strong tendon there, her hips grinding purposefully against his as she began unfastening his belt. Her hair was a wild mane, spilling over her shoulders, all around them, stealing its way into his mouth as he kissed her in the crook of her neck. It was as if the two of them had suddenly caught afire.

She stepped into their kiss, guiding him backwards towards the bed as if in dance, until his legs hit the bedframe and he eased down onto the mattress, his hands around her waist bringing her down with him. Her fingers traced the hard lines of his ribcage, enjoying the press of his bones up against her hands, the jutting angle of his pelvis, his dark hair curling around his ears and perfuming his aura with the smell of cigarettes.

Autumn retrieved the ribbon and Arthur held his hands to her almost instinctively, allowing her to kiss his fingers as she wrapped the binding around and around him. He tested its strength with a light tug, found himself immobile, and nodded in affirmation.

“Blindfold, too?” she asked as she secured his wrists to the bedframe.

_“Please.”_

Within seconds, Arthur sank into the comfort of the darkness, the bindings on his wrists lending him an unexpected sensation of protection. Autumn planted delicate kisses down his chest, her tongue making a wet and curious line down his hard sternum, tasting him, wanting him. Beside him, he felt her shimmy out of her skirt, heard the shushing sound of her top sliding from her torso, and in his mind’s eye he imagined her nude and delicious and touching him. Autumn’s delicate little thumb brushed suddenly against his mouth, parting his lips with the persuasiveness of its touch, her soft mouth following close behind. Arthur could not help but imagine them in the third person, her slender, naked body curled up against his, himself bound and blindfolded as she kissed him and loved him.

Her tongue was soft and cautious against his own, not dominating his mouth but caressing it, guiding it, her thumb softly stroking his jawline as they kissed, her love as beautiful and commanding as a revolver cloaked in crushed velvet. She withdrew he tongue from his mouth and pecked a tiny kiss on his nose before saying,

“I have a little something for you.”

Arthur’s heart rate perked up a beat. He became both anxious and excited. He heard Autumn withdraw something from her nightstand, heard the plastic crinkle sound of something opening, then silence. He swallowed nervously.

“Open your mouth,” she instructed him.

For moment, his lips barely parted, then clamped shut again. Under the blindfold, Arthur felt his cheeks flushing red.

Autumn nuzzled against him and he could feel her mouth pull into a smile against his face, her lashes brushing up against his cheek. “You think I’m gonna put something yucky in your mouth?”

Arthur made an almost imperceptible sound. He could feel his face flushing.

“It’s okay, you can say if you’re afraid.”

He swallowed. “Don’t…”

She kissed him on the corner of his mouth. “You want me to tell you what it is?”

He nodded. Beside him was the sensation of Autumn placing something in her mouth, sucking gently. There was the soft sound of something hard rolling against her teeth. She made a little pop as she pulled it from her lips.

“It’s a lollipop. You wanna try it?”

A little of the hesitance in his stomach released. Still a bit unsure, he said timidly, “Alright.”

Arthur opened his mouth hesitantly, the darkness of the blindfold adding an atmosphere of peculiar mystery with which he was unfamiliar. His hands wriggled a little in the silk bindings. In the open space between his teeth, he could sense that Autumn had placed a small object there and his mouth closed around it. It tasted like cotton candy.

She asked, “That’s not so bad, is it?”

“No,” he replied around the candy. “It’s actually…it tastes good.”

She kissed his sharp cheek bone. “Of course it does.”

The lollipop went back into her mouth.

Using the sharpened point of her index fingernail, Autumn traced a line down Arthur’s chest, circling around the sparse but soft hair there. He could feel her naked breasts against his torso, the gentle prickling of her pubic hair against his naked thigh as she cuddled herself against his body. Arthur desperately wanted to touch her, and he moaned softly into his arm in part frustration, part exhilaration as he tugged his bound hands on the bedframe. She came back up to kiss him again, the sugar taste even more prominent on her tongue now.

“Want some more?” she asked. He nodded and opened his mouth. She placed the sucker there and gently pecked at his sternum, the prominent bones of his ribcage, the firm, tight muscles of his belly; she even made her way up to his underarm and kissed into the hair there, tasting and smelling her lover’s natural, inoffensive scent. Arthur’s tongue swirled deliriously around the lollipop as she got closer and closer to his groin.

His prick was pulsing and hard in his underwear, and she put her supple hand on it through the fabric. Arthur was already weak with excitement and he feared he might go over the edge before she had a chance to try anything with him. Autumn nuzzled her nose against him through his clothing, kissing at the long, hard organ, and Arthur could not help but squirm against the bindings around his wrists. Unable to use his hands, he lifted his hips up to her mouth and immediately blushed, embarrassed at his own lack of restraint. He was briefly grateful for the blindfold hiding his expression.

“You’re such a sweet man, Arthur,” she purred, continuing to kiss and stroke him. “I love how gentle you are.”

Arthur made a weak sound over the candy. He was dying for her to touch him. The inside of his underwear was already growing sticky with his enjoyment. Autumn sucked at the damp spot and Arthur could have wept with his want of her.

Again she was taking the lollipop out of his mouth and kissing him, tasting him, their mouths honeyed and sloppy with saliva.

“Open your mouth,” she whispered, her breath becoming heavy with desire. This time Arthur obeyed, wanting to play, wanting to do this little dance on which she was leading him, and with her delicate hand she gently tilted his head upward. “Stick your tongue out for me.” She brushed her little thumb against the tip of his tongue and he could taste the sweet sticky sugar there.

Her chest was in his face, his tongue brushing against her small, pert nipple, her ass grinding into his aching erection as she sat on his lap, teased him, tortured him with desire. She pulled the sucker out of her mouth with a soft girlish moan. “You’re being such a good boy for me,” she breathed weakly, pushing his face deeper into the softness of her chest. With the bend of her index finger she guided his face upwards again and kissed him, her mouth sweet and pink with sugar, her saliva cotton candy delicious on his tongue. Arthur’s prick was riding the warmth between her legs, her thighs squeezing against him torturously.

“God, please…!” he moaned, a force behind his desperation.

Into his mouth, she teased, “You want it?”

“Yes!”

Reaching between their bodies, she began to pull his rock hard cock from his boxers. “You want me to fuck you?”

Her fist sliding up and down him, he made a sound that may have been affirmation. In the blackness of the blindfold, Arthur’s world was dizzy with sensation.

“Tell me,” she ordered him, her voice potent with love. “Tell me you want me to fuck you.”

“I w-want you…to fuck me.” Arthur’s soft voice trembled with desire and anticipation, his eyes rolling behind the dark fabric. “Fuck me, please.”

Holding his chin, she gently tilted his head upwards and into his hopelessly open mouth she gave him the sweetness of her pink saliva, his tongue red and out and good for her. She kissed him once more, her tongue soft and wet on his, and spat inside him again, her juices slicking his lips, a line of candy syrup saliva between their mouths.

He could feel her pulling down her panties and just about died with anticipation, his prick leaking the fluid of his desire. Within seconds, the head of his cock was against her, feeling her wetness, pressing through the boundary of her body until she enveloped him. Wrapping her arms around him, she eased down until he was inside her completely. He kissed her hopelessly, wanting to take in more of her, wanting more of her cotton candy mouth.

They both sighed in pleasure as he pressed up inside her. She braced herself on the bedframe behind his head, the sucker forgotten in her right hand, and pushed her hips down to meet him, the pleasure almost agonizing in its intensity. Her body fit around his so perfectly, sliding up and down on him, slick and wet like the candy stone rolling in her mouth. Arthur strained delightfully against the ribbon, fingers clenching and unclenching, all of his desire channeled from his bound appendages into the thrusting of his pelvis.

“I-I’m going to come,” he warned her, so high with pleasure that he was already nearly at his end. His impending orgasm was an electric current from the head of his cock into the depths of his belly, his testicles high and tight against his body.

Autumn lowered her hips down onto him and ground them, circular, against his pelvis, his climax receding with a frothing snarl. Arthur moaned pitifully.

“Oh, god, please,” he whimpered, his hands reddening as he strained against his bindings.

Autumn groped at her breast, rolling her nipple between her fingers and making a pleasured whine of her own at the jolt of sensation it sent into her groin. “I want you to wait for me,” she told him. “You’re gonna be good boy and wait for me?”

Arthur’s brain rolled in his skull, his prick pulsing eagerly inside her, thick to bursting. He slurred, “I don’t wa-…I can’t…”

He could feel her reaching down the front of her body, small, slender hand snaking its way past her navel, that dark tuft of coarse hair, fingers landing on that little button between her legs. Her clitoris was an engorged cherry, juicy with her want of him, her cunt squeezing deliciously around his cock as she touched herself to the sight of him. Arthur’s dark hair was slick with sweat, the bones of his ribcage stretching against the skin of his slender abdomen as he panted, the tight muscles of his belly contracting as he held precariously onto the slippery reins of his orgasm.

In her pleasure, Autumn ground down on him, riding the throbbing of his thick cock inside her and bucking against the playing of her hand, her nipples hard little buds on her breasts. She leaned forward and let Arthur take one into his mouth, her lover sucking impulsively on the nub of flesh. Her fluids gushed around him, his pubic hair dewy with her, each of them all over each other, wet and succulent and tasty with the other. Autumn whimpered into the air.

“Arthur, I’m going to come for you,” she wailed, her thighs gripping him as she began to rock once more on his prick, squeezing down on him internally. “I’m coming on you, oh my god…!”

Instinctively, she bounced as her body clenched around him, soaking him in her sweet juices as she moaned and called out for him. His head fell back as he groaned, his own climax imminently chasing hers.

“Put your come inside me,” she pleaded, wanting to be totally filled up with him. “Give me your come, Arthur.”

He spilled over inside her, whimpering hopelessly as he came. For a few moments, Arthur was reduced to a mess of incoherent moaning, his entire psyche scrambled by the crushing force of his orgasm. When he came to again, Autumn was kissing his forehead, his eyebrows, the hook of his nose. The soles of his feet tingled. 

Arthur panted, wiping the sweat from his face on his bound arm. He heard Autumn crunch into the lollipop.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

He shook his head weakly. “Can you untie me now?”

She obliged and removed his blindfold as well, letting it hang around his neck. He took her face in his hands and kissed her. Shards of lollipop landed on his tongue.

For a moment he simply held her there, breathing in the space between them. His body felt soft and pliable, almost boneless. She kissed the tip of his nose. Arthur took a breath in and found it shaky.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah…can I have a cigarette in here?”

She smiled. “Sure. This time.”

Autumn threw the chewed paper stick of her candy in the small garbage can by her bedroom door and left to wash up. Arthur fished his pack of cigarettes out of his trouser pockets and smoked while staring purposefully at the ceiling, his heavy brows making his expression appear furrowed and serious. Some tender branch was sprouting inside him in that place where his emotions had gone to die. The black paint on the inner walls of his heart was beginning to chip off. Something dewy and green was growing there.

When Autumn came back, Arthur realized that the corners of his eyes were wet.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

Arthur burst out laughing.

\---

In the dead of the night, Arthur wrote in his journal:

_Some thing is happening to me but I don’t know what. _

_I am not so lonely any more. _

He did not sleep, spending his hours listening to the radio and thinking about Autumn.


	11. 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little short bit I wrote. Felt right to start off the second act this way. Enjoy.

In her office, Arthur’s therapist read aloud,

_“To day I saw some teen agers lite a cat on fire in an alley way thankfuly_

_it was dead already but the smell was just awful. They were poking and_

_laffing at it. I wish I could have done something. What a terrible way to go.”_

Arthur took a short drag on the nub of his cigarette. 

“I didn’t know you were going to read it,” he said behind his hand. Smoke rose up into his eyes and he blew it away.

“And how did that make you feel, seeing those kids do that to the cat?” she asked, not looking at him, scanning through the personal and secret artifacts of his thoughts with the air of a person looking through a celebrity magazine in an airport. Arthur wanted to snatch the book out of her hand.

Angry. Scared. Hopeless. Helpless. Angry. Afraid. Angry.

Arthur began to laugh.

“Bad,” he said. He voice wavered with laughter. He pulled on his cigarette and his mouth grimaced around it as he snickered.

The therapist flipped passed two pages, crispy and sealed together with the glue of his come, her wrinkled fingers touching the place where he’d shot his perversion, and his voice broke into a peal of hysterics. Arthur only barely fought back against the cackling shaking his body, the ash of his cigarette dropping onto the floor as his therapist shot him a cross glance and ignorantly turned past the stained pages of his journal. With a wheezing inward breath, Arthur was able to steady himself, a few final snorts of laughter escaping from his nose.

He started, “Sorry, it’s my—”

“I know.” She closed the journal and handed it back to him. Arthur hid it in his pocket, his body lined with embarrassment and something that resembled irritation. He put out his dead cigarette and lit another one. 

She folded her hands together on the desk like a principal about the reprimand a naughty student. “And how have you been feeling, recently?” she asked. “Any negative thoughts?”

It was almost an accusation.

“No,” he replied, smoke slithering from between his teeth. “I feel a lot better now.”

“And what about your job? Are you still working?”

“Yes.”

She continued, picking up his file and opening it, “One of the last times you were here, I had the nurse practitioner increase one of your medications. How are you doing with that?”

Arthur chuckled around his cigarette. For a moment he thought that she somehow knew that he’d poured the pills, all of them, down the toilet, and felt like a boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. But when she waited tentatively for his response, he cautiously replied, “They’re fine.”

A few notes scratched in his file. Arthur’s laughter peppering the silence around them. In another room, a phone rang twice before someone picked it up.

The counselor’s eyes darted towards the clock on the wall behind him. “I’m going to have to end a little early with you this week, I have a meeting. I’ll see you at the same time next week. Don’t forget to bring your journal.”

Arthur was still laughing when he left the room.


End file.
